“I was still at primary school when Jack went to university,” he said. “Still a child, while he was a young man. But a young man who’d been educated in the sexually enclosed world of an all-boys school. Like so many of his peers, he had no idea how to relate to the opposite sex.”
“Didn’t they have school dances?”
“Sure. Once a year. They bussed in the opposite sex from Hutchie Girls, and they were just as inexperienced as the boys.”
He recalled his own exposure to those annual events where adolescent hormones were released to pulse frustratingly through the bodies of hopelessly ill-prepared teenage boys and girls who stood eyeing each other up across the breadth of the school hall, without the first idea of how to conduct themselves.
“Back then, and probably still, all the female roles in the school play had to be performed by boys.” He smiled. “An early introduction to the idea of cross-dressing.”
Sophie laughed. “Did you ever have to do that, papa?”
In spite of himself Enzo blushed. “Once, yes. I was dressed up as a geisha to play one of the little maids in the school production of The Mikado.”
Sophie sat up, her face shining. “Oh. My. God. You don’t have any photographs, do you?”
Enzo laughed. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t let you see them. I’d never hear the end of it, and you’d have them all over the internet before I could say Gilbert and Sullivan.”
Sophie’s smile was wicked. “Note to self. Must search through papa’s family photos for incriminating evidence.”
Enzo cast her a dangerous look.
“Anyway. So Uncle Jack went to university knowing nothing about women…” Sophie offered him a cue to take up where he’d left off.
Enzo nodded, and a flood of memories broke over him. “He got himself into big trouble. Awash with testosterone and no idea how to handle it, he stumbled from one disastrous relationship to another. In fact, I figure he was probably still a virgin even by the time he went into his second year. Which is when he got himself into really deep doodoo.”
“What happened?”
He wasn’t quite sure now where all the details had come from. Things he had heard Jack say. Gossip among his peers. Conversations between his parents, conducted in hushed tones and overhead through half-shut doors. “One of his friends was having a New Year’s party at his house. One of those big red sandstone terraced houses off Highburgh Road in the west end. The father was some big wheel lawyer, but the parents had recently got divorced and the father had moved out. The mother, Rita, was this…” he hesitated, searching for the right word, “… diaphanous sort of creature. Almost winged. Beautiful and breathless. Delicate, like an Arthur Rackham illustration. She was lonely and sad, but sexually experienced. And she took a fancy to Jack. In fact, took him to bed that very night, from all accounts, and probably took his virginity, too.”
Sophie was rapt. Eyes fixed on her father, wide with wonder, and trying to picture the moment.
Enzo shook his head. “A chance encounter, really, and it changed his life. He fell for her. Completely, unreservedly, insanely.”
“What was wrong with that?”
“Rita was almost thirty years older than him. Nearly fifty.”
“So? An experienced woman, an inexperienced young man. Why shouldn’t they enjoy the moment?”
“They didn’t just enjoy the moment, Sophie. Rita took up almost every moment of his life from that day on. He dropped out of university before the end of the spring term, and they were married within six months.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” He paused. It had been a period of great turmoil in the Macleod household, with Enzo little more than a fascinated spectator. “My parents did everything they could to dissuade him. Of course, he never listened to my mum anyway, but dad couldn’t talk him out of it either. No one could. I suppose if I’d been older, I might have tried. But I was just a kid, way in the background somewhere, kind of aware of all the rows and tension in the house, but not really a part of it.”
“Did you go to the wedding?”
“Of course. We all did. A pretty lavish affair it was, too. Rita paid for it herself. Her divorce settlement had left her financially independent and she owned that big terraced house in the west end. As much for his own self- respect as anything else, Jack felt he had to work, having quit his studies. He got a job in the civil service, way below the level he’d have gone in at if he’d finished his degree. We hardly saw him for two years.”
“What happened?”
“Rita hated him being out of the house. Hated being left alone. She was lonely and depressed, and increasingly hypochondriac. It was clear to my parents, on the few occasions they saw him, that it wasn’t going well. He never brought her to the house. And any time they visited him she was ‘indisposed’. Not feeling well, and taken herself off to bed.”
“That must have been awful for him. Embarrassing.”
“It was worse than any of us knew. We didn’t find out the whole truth till later. It seems she had started drinking and took to her bed full-time, spending her life in a darkened room with the curtains drawn. Jack remained faithful and dedicated, doing everything for her. Bringing her meals to her room, organising a maid to come in three days a week, and learning to do the laundry himself.
“But increasingly she saw him as errant and absent. Finding fault with everything he did. Arguing over every little thing, flying off the handle at the slightest excuse.”
He paused, catching sight of his reflection again in the window, recognising that in retrospect he felt much more sympathy for Jack than he ever had at the time. Then, he had believed his elder half-brother to be foolish and selfish. But looking back, he could see now what a living hell it must have been for him. It was strange the way that time and experience changed how you saw things, lending an insight you’d never had in the moment.
“Anyway, one day he came home from work to find her dangling at the end of a rope in the stairwell. She’d left a note for him, full of self-obsession and self-pity, but somehow she had managed to spill a bottle of perfume over it and the ink had run, obliterating most of her words. So he never really understood why she had done it. Except that she had been a deeply troubled soul. He blamed himself, of course, even though he had been dedicated to her and done everything for her that he could. There was no consoling him.”
“I can imagine.” Sophie finished the last of her wine and filled the glass again. It was clear that her father’s story was not yet over.
“After the funeral everything got messy. Jack should have inherited the house, but there was no will. And Rita’s ex, who had paid for it in the first place, didn’t see why he should get it, so contested it in court. Of course, being a lawyer himself, it was no contest. Jack lost everything and came back home to live with us.”
“Hah,” Sophie said. “You must have loved that.”
Enzo remained silent for a long moment. “There were only two bedrooms in our flat. My parents had one, and when I was wee, Jack had the other. I slept in a recess off the kitchen that they drew curtains over at night. When Jack left home, I got his room.”
“And when he came back, you got tossed out and into the recess again?”
Enzo nodded. “It was like the cuckoo had returned to the nest.” He paused. “Actually, more like the prodigal son. He was welcomed back with open arms, the total focus of my parents’ attention. My father did all but kill the fatted calf.”
“And you resented that?”
“At the time yes, I did. I was in my teens by then. Not an easy age at the best of times. The kitchen was where the family cooked and ate and lived. There was a big, black range along one wall with a coal-burning stove that heated the hotplates and the oven. The sitting room was only ever used when we had visitors. The kitchen was the warmest room in the house and there was always someone in it. So I lost all my privacy. And at that age, when you’re only really beginning to discover yourself, privacy is important.”
“How long did he stay?”
“Right up until I was eighteen.”
“And he never got involved with anyone else?”
“Not during my school years, no.” Enzo was silent for some moments, still choking on the memory. “I stayed on for a sixth year at secondary school and got a place at Glasgow University. My folks said I could have a party at
