I ask her, “What were you hoping for? What were you expecting out of me?”
For a moment her face clears. Now she really looks like she’s thinking aloud and being honest with me.
“You wanted to see me married and with nice kids, didn’t you? And a job, a proper job, and—”
With a sudden, sharp gesture she cuts me dead. “Stop it, Andrew.” She looks hurt. “Give me some credit, man. We both knew a long time ago that was impossible.” She stares at me. “Didn’t we? That sort of normalness. We both knew it wasn’t going to happen. There was no point in waiting and pushing for it.”
“Oh.” I wish I hadn’t shoved my oar in. I should have given her more credit, she’s right. Nervously I’m fiddling with the tassels on my baby’s blanket.
She goes on, “What my hopes were about was more general. I wanted you to find the way you could live, and be happy.”
Simple as that? I give her a sceptical look. Like, you don’t believe all that liberal shit, do you? I can’t really believe it of this Tory-voting, council-house-owning elderly lady. She can’t really mean this.
“I thought,” she says, “you might be the first in this family to start making your own life up the way you want. I thought you might not have to compromise...quite as much.”
Nanna Jean stares at my baby. “Now you’ve landed yourself with a bairn and all the cares that entails. Same as the rest of us all did, going back generations. All right — you’ve waited till the grand old age of twenty-four. That’s good. But you’ve still given yourself the job of being responsible for another human being. Did you do it just to have someone to love?”
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
“I did,” she says. “I married to have a baby, to get someone to love.”
I never knew this. I’d just assumed that in those days —when were they? — women just had babies because…because there was no pill. They had them natural and easy and they had large, problematic families. I don’t say anything.
“Don’t you love your life?” asks Nanna Jean. “You live in that city of yours. It’s cold and heaving with busyness and noise. The place where you live is dirty and you’ll never have everything you want. You don’t feel like a normal part of life at all. You’ve not got any of the normal things, the things that someone of your age might expect. The little comforts and consolations. But what freedom you’ve got, our Andrew! I can hardly believe it. You’re in a place where anything can happen. The way you live, you’re only ever a few steps from something new.”
She sniffs and looks at this room in which she has lived for most of her life. Refurbished, redecorated, done up and dusted, yet it still makes her give a long, fed-up sigh. As if there’s only so far you can go, doing things up. “Something new, Andrew! Have you any idea how much I’ve wanted my life to turn into something new?”
I hug my baby to me. “Jep is something new.”
“Give him to me, hinny,” she says, putting out her hands. Her wide, chapped palms. Her fingers tremble as if she’s been putting off this moment, delaying her pleasure. She takes his weight — how expertly! She puts her face right up to his tiny, exotic one. His hands bat gently at her nose, her slack cheeks.
“He’s a beautiful bairn, our Andrew.” Her puzzled frown is also full of amusement. “You clever thing! However did you manage it?”
These are the things she will do. This is what she will say. Should I take Jep on a trip to South Shields, should we catch the train from Edinburgh, from Waverley Station, and ride it to the northeast, through that wild and empty landscape, this will be our reception.
I’m in the Scarlet Empress, thinking this all up. It’s a rainy Friday afternoon. The rain has taken everyone by surprise. I’ve made one cup of coffee last ages. Her from upstairs has taken Jep for a walk. She likes to walk him to Arthur’s Seat, up past the palace, to the foot of the crags. And that’s fine. At first I was resentful of the bond they’re forming, Jep and that woman upstairs. But he needs other people around him. We all do. So I let him go out with her and I get this time alone, to think and brood. Nanna Jean says brooding isn’t a thing you should do. You depress yourself. You should be like her, she said. Be up and about and busy, busy, busy.
A man with short, strawberry-blond hair has moved tables to come and sit by me. His legs are crossed, his coffee untouched. He holds Boyz magazine wide open and studies each page slowly as if there’s stocks and shares on it. Whenever I look up, he looks up and it’s an imploring look. When I look down I can feel his eyes still on me. I should go. I should go home. I look up and he looks up and he has absolutely no expression on his face.
If the woman from upstairs can take him on long, healthy walks, then so can I. Sandra walks my baby up to Arthur’s Seat. They walk up the crags to catch the air, to stretch their legs. The air is so bracing up there, she says. You see it come in off the sea. Cool, salty, endless air and all that light!
If she can walk my son up there, then so can I. If that is his favourite trip out, then I should do it too.
Little mite, does he even know who is taking him out?
Marched himself to the top of the hill, and marched it down again. Look at the crags. Cinder toffee, how long
