Millie had a small doll-like face, with voice to match, thin and rather shrill. She had also, disconcertingly, one of the roundest, most enticing dowps I had ever seen. She showed it off to its best advantage by wearing her skirts and trousers too tight. Some thought she was being naive and guileless; others, including me, weren’t so sure.
There were my daughters, Madge and Jean, quietly weeping. They loved me and I loved them but now and then they gave me sad, reproachful looks. They thought that I had not appreciated their mother as I should. It was true and it broke my heart. But who is ever valued as he or she deserves? We leave that to God, whether we believe in Him or not.
Present also were Alec Riddick, one-time Sheriff; Angus McVey, ex-lawyer; Archie McBain, retired civil engineer; and Jimmy McDowall, quantity surveyor, also retired: all septuagenarians and citizens of substance. They, with Henry if his bowels allowed, met with me every Tuesday morning in Murchison’s tearoom in the main street, where we discussed the affairs of the world, often with, I have to confess, childish clamour. We had done it for years. It was an institution in the town. Outnumbered, for they were all Tories, I kept my end up with much wit and a little sophistry. At Armistice time they wore their medals. I could not, for in my case it would have been showing off. I had won the Military Medal and could claim to be a hero.
Then there was myself, Gregor McLeod, 72 years of age. What was it Kate had said, with affection, but also with her elusive irony that so often had me searching? ‘But, Gregor, how could you teach primary schoolchildren for forty years and not acquire some of their characteristics?’ She was right, of course. My pride in my collection of books, my red Mercedes with the black leather upholstery, my Ping golf clubs, and my wardrobe of expensive blazers and tweed suits was akin to that of a small boy in his comics, his bicycle, and his Rangers strip. In my favour I could claim that I knew my faults, as a shepherd knows his sheep, and rounded them up from time to time to dip them in the disinfectant of self-criticism.
As the handfuls of earth were dropping on the coffin, I was in tears. ‘Dear Kate,’ I murmured. If the minister was right and the dead – so he had seemed to say – shared God’s knowledge and therefore knew everything, then Kate heard and saw me. I imagined her smiling. She had had the loveliest of smiles. She had it when she was 24, at the time of our marriage, and she still had it when she had died, 46 years later.
Crows cawed overhead, but not in derision.
2
After the funeral, Madge and Jean sought me out in my study, where, to tell the truth, I was looking at photographs of Kate. They wanted to know my plans for the future. They had promised their mother that they would look after me.
Kate must have been much amused.
Madge, aged 45, was tall and fair, like her mother in appearance. She had an honours degree in Economics. Her views were right-wing. She had met her American husband Frank in London, where they were both working, she at the Treasury and he at the British branch of his Californian bank. They had a son and a daughter. Madge had acquired a transatlantic drawl.
‘Dad, Madge and I would like to know what you intend doing,’ said Jean, her eyes still red from weeping. ‘We know that you think you can look after yourself. Perhaps you can now but soon you’ll not be able to.’
‘We don’t think you should stay on in this house,’ said Madge. ‘It’s too big. You’d feel lonely. You’d be haunted by memories of Mom. You’d be happier in a small flat downtown.’
‘You wouldn’t need a car if you lived there,’ said Jean. ‘You could walk to anywhere you wanted. You could take a taxi to the golf club, But in any case you’ll soon have to think about giving up golf.’
It was time to torpedo this well-meaning but mistaken solicitude.
‘I’m thinking of going to India,’ I said.
‘India!’ they cried, aghast.
‘Where the Taj Mahal is.’
That magnificent monument to a beloved wife.
‘To one of those ashrams?’ said Jean.
‘Yes, Jean, to an ashram.’
‘Are you serious, Dad?’ asked Madge.
Well, was I? I had good reason to be serious. I had just lost the woman I had been married to for 46 years. In an ashram, where humility was encouraged, I might be better able to cope with my grief.
‘I’ve read about them,’ said Jean. ‘Frauds, many of them. Always on the look-out for gullible old fools who’ll give them all their money.’
‘Thanks very much, Jean,’ I said.
‘But, Dad, you’ve never been religious. You used to grumble when Mum let us go to the Sunday school.’
‘I was young then and prejudiced.’
Madge then spoke, or rather, made an announcement. ‘If you feel the need for the comfort that religion can give, you do not have to go as far as India to find it.’
Jean, sly besom, then hit on what she considered an incontestable argument. ‘You’d have to shave off your hair and your moustache.’
She knew I would never sacrifice my abundant, wavy, snow-white locks and moustache to match for all the gurus in India.
Madge had another announcement to make. ‘You may like to know,’ she said, haughtily, ‘that Frank and I recently gave ourselves to Jesus.’
I was horrified but not surprised. I had met the minister of their local church in San Diego: a fat, bald, evangelical clown, who kept crying, ‘Hosannah!’
Jean took the news coolly. ‘That’s your privilege, Madge,’ she said.
Just then, Frank, straightening his black bow tie, came into the study to say in his soft voice that the taxi to take him and Madge to the airport was at the door. He had already shaken my hand, soulfully, at least eight times in the past three days, but he did it again.
‘I hope Madge has told you, Dad,’ he said, ‘that you will be very welcome in San Diego if ever you should choose to pay us a visit.’
‘Robert and I will always be glad to see you in Edinburgh,’ said Jean.
‘They often ask about you at the Country Club,’ said Frank. ‘Don’t they, Madge?’
Madge did not answer.
‘Mrs Birkenberger – you remember her, Dad? – asked me just the other day when you were coming back.’
‘Didn’t she used to be the actress, Linda Blossom, in black-and-white films?’ said Jean. ‘Married and divorced four times.’
‘Five’ said Madge.
‘But she’s very very rich’, said Frank, fervently. ‘Our bank handles a lot of her affairs. She owns the land on which the Country Club is situated.’
‘And she thinks it gives her a right to behave disgracefully,’ said Madge.
I well remembered the redoubtable Mrs Birkenberger. As Linda Blossom, she had been an internationally famed beauty. I had met her at the Poinsettia Country Club. Impressed by my graceful golf swing, and by my ducal demeanour, she had invited, or rather, commanded me to play a few holes with her. I had enjoyed it, though she had played very badly and used language unfit for a golf course. ‘Fuck it!’ she had cried after every duffed shot, and there had been many. Afterwards, members had whispered congratulations into my ears. I had been in a cage with a lioness of unreliable temper and had emerged unscathed. She was small and stout, with her face heavily made up and her hair dyed jet black. She had laughed often and randily. It was rumoured that she hired young athletes to pleasure her in bed. I hadn’t been attracted to her sexually, thinking her too old and uncouth, but I had had Kate to