Thomas
As a hush descends in the house, I no longer need topretend to Janey that I am lying asleep. I sit upright in bed and find mythoughts drifting back to Skye. I wonder what has become of my siblings. In allthe years following my departure from Skye they have never tried to makecontact. I consider whether this has been a fault of mine or if it’s a mutualindifference.
We truly are a broken family. This painsme somewhat when I consider the upbringing Janey had. It was in stark contrastto mine. I wonder what it must have been like to have had parents who dote onyou; to grow up without the recurring simmering threat of violence in the air.
I suspect that I, along with mother(although obviously to nowhere near the same degree), bore the brunt offather’s moods. I took on board the job of keeping my siblings in check andlooked after them whilst mother cooked and cleaned. She was so consumed withchores and jobs on the croft which were never-ending. He would bark orders atme, and I was only too willing to oblige since anytime spent outside of thehouse was a welcome relief.
There is no contact either with father andI muse over where he is now and what has become of him. Surely he can’t betending to the croft all on his own? Were any of my siblings still therehelping out?
I left Skye at age 16. My siblings(Caroline, James, and Juliet) were all younger than me. At a rough estimate, Iwould suggest they would now be in their early thirties (Juliet, however, maybe late twenties). Unlikely they would still be living on the croft and, ifthey were, I felt heart sorry for them. Left alone with father, what kind oflife would that be?
Mother is the only one I am still in contactwith. I say still in contact, but only intermittently via telephone. I getregular updates from the nursing home she now calls home. She has early on setdementia and lives in her own little world most of the time. When she has lucidmoments, the staff are very good at contacting me and I chat with her briefly.The content of these chats varies drastically depending on how her mood is thatday and whether her medication is having a positive effect. Sometimes she hasme fooled into thinking she shouldn’t be in care, that there’s nothing wrongwith her. At other times she may have agreed to chat with me and when I speakto her, she can scream at me down the phone, shouting repeatedly, “Go away; goaway.”
When I first started making these callswith her, I used to bring up father’s name or my siblings. Or sometimes I wouldtalk about matters relating to the croft. But I soon realised that this put hermood into a downward spiral, and she reverted further into herself. Any chatabout the past seemed to make her recoil and I pictured a frail little woman onthe other end of the phone, so we kept things simple. I would enquire aboutwhat she had been up to and what the food was like. Very banal conversation butthis was the way it had to be. It was very frustrating as I had no clue whathad become of my siblings. Father I was not so concerned about, but I wasanxious to know if my brother and sisters were OK.
I recall some of the times we spent on thecroft. We stuck together and pulled together when there were jobs to be done,such as cutting the peat or feeding the animals, but when there was some freetime it often fell that my sisters would pair up and go off together and I’d beleft with James.
All three had very differencepersonalities. Caroline came across as very quiet and timid. A reserved girl,she shied away from large gatherings and was not confident at speaking out.What people did not realise was that underneath that shy timid exterior, therewas a very clever mind at work. She was a master manipulator. How expertly sheworked at making you think you had chosen to do something in a certain way, butshe was a puppeteer, pulling your strings and making you bend and twist thisway and that to the beat of her drum. The truth was you could never be angry ather either because of the timid little girl persona she donned. She was reallysuch an expert in manipulation that you were always left questioning whethershe could’ve possibly had any part to play in the outcome of the situation inthe first place.
Juliet was theyoungest and, bless her, she just went along and had to do what she was told.She was a beautiful girl and was very open and honest. I felt sad for hergrowing up as I felt sure she would have been used as a pawn by Caroline. Ifshe was being manipulated, she didn’t let it bring her down. Nor did she letfather’s dark moods penetrate her positivity. She radiated happiness and Isuspect this was a source of annoyance to father who seemed to revel in us allemanating his gloominess. Yes, we could all aspire to be more like Juliet.
Then there was James. What can I say aboutJames! The sides of my mouth pinch as I realise a smile is forming on my lips.I have fond memories of James. He was the quintessential naughty schoolboy. Hewas forever plotting and scheming up new plans, never able to sit still tocatch a breath. But you couldn’t help but have a soft spot for him at the sametime. We all think at one time or another about what we would like to do in asituation, but something holds us back. With James there was no such filter. Heacted upon anything which came into his mind. I marvelled at some
