Colin was playing with a salad. “I wish I did.”
“I like hearing about what it was like before,” said Wendy. “You must have lived here for years.”
“Years,” agreed Uncle Pat. “But now that you’re here...” he paused. “I’m sure you’ll find plenty to keep yourself busy now that you’re here.”
They were finding out the kinds of things she liked to do, and trying their best to please her. She didn’t know herself what she liked anymore. She was happy to let them lead her around. Colin took her to the galleries: on the long, leafy walk along the Waters of Leith to the Museum of Modern Art. He was silent much of the way as they crossed and re-crossed the river and dams and ducked the overhanging trees. In the cafes they visited Colin liked to read or simply watch the people at other tables. Wendy took this time to write letters to her sisters or Timon. She found that she wanted to read, too, which was a novelty for her. She begged Timon to send her some stories he had finished, and wished that he would hurry and get on with that novel of his. But he was so precious with the things he wrote. He said it made him feel too vulnerable, showing even someone he trusted his unfinished work. And all his work was unfinished. He could tinker on with stories forever. There was always something to correct. To a perfectionist like him, Timon wrote, the words he wrote never quite chimed in with real life. They slid off the surface and spilled away. He preferred just telling her the stories he thought up or heard. In fact, he thought, he would never publish anything in his lifetime. Let them find it when he was dead in a gutter. And anyway, he told her, she should be immersing herself in new things, not his old stuff. Wendy considered what he said. “Something new, coming true,” she reminded herself.
When Uncle Pat took her out it was so he could talk to her. She got the feeling he didn’t get much of a chance usually, and he was a right old gas-bag. Colin was by nature quiet, it seemed, and Captain Simon was chatty, but not very forthcoming or, actually, that interested in what anyone else had to say. Wendy could tell her Uncle was pleased that she listened to him going on. He took her peculiar places, too, that she would never think of. With him she went to dingy but cosy cafetierias down the rougher end of Leith Walk, where they watched the racing on a portable TV. He took her to the launderette to meet some of his cronies, who greeted him and her with a certain dry-lipped jocularity. She realised that he was showing her off. “See this? This is my long-lost niece.”
She even started going out places with Belinda, the big woman from downstairs. Belinda must have been fifty, but she dressed much younger and liked to think of herself as closer to Wendy’s generation. She wanted to know whether Wendy would be a pal of hers, and come out clubbing and dancing in the evening. Why not, Wendy shrugged.
The only person not to make an effort going out with her and showing her round was Aunty Anne. Now that they were here and settling into the flat in the Royal Circus, Anne seemed to have lost a certain amount of interest in her niece. She spent her time at the car boot sales held in multi-storey car parks around the city, picking up bits of old tat—pictures and ornaments mostly—for a few bob at a time. These she would sell in the auctions held down the Thistle Street warehouses on weekday mornings. She was making a bit of extra pocket money, she said. Colin raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I think she’s making a fortune. She says she discovered this latent talent for flogging things. When did she find that out?”
“Ah,” said Wendy. “That was when our mother died.” She explained the situation with the collection of horses.
“That’s awful!” said Colin. “Fancy just getting rid like that.” He sighed. “My mother hasn’t got a sentimental bone in her body.” They were having coffee in the sculpture park at the Musuem of Modern Art. It was one of Wendy’s favourite things so far, sitting amongst the distended, silvery bodies sporting on the lawn. She wasn’t sure she agreed with Colin about her Aunty. She must have something sentimental in her, or sympathetic at least, to have brought Wendy here in the first place.
She noticed how green it was. They liked to have lots of trees in this city. It made the place seem fresh to her. You could be in the thick of the busiest street, diesel fumes lining your throat as you squeezed past the queue at the bus stop, and all you’d have to do is turn the next corner. Bound to be a bit of green there. Trees lush with leaves held in clusters, in long, fat fingers. Bunches of bright greenish bananas in their thousands. She knew from the little biology she’d studied that what trees breathe out, she breathed in. The whole city seemed to breathe. At least, it seemed that way to Wendy, who lived in a yellow room at the top of a tall house and she could leave the skylight open. Let the breeze into her room, let it pick up and whirl her few belongings about: the lightest of them anyway, her letters. She loved to let the wind push its careless paws into her room through the gap in the ceiling.
After a fortnight or so Wendy was sent a letter, printed green on green notepaper, asking if she would like to join something called Job Party. It was a club that met three times a week in an airless office behind the DHSS. If she attended three times a
