And I wondered, as I wandered down the hall towards the Rose Room, whether I am old before my time. The set of seven octogenarian faces that greeted me when I opened the door reminded me that, at the very least, I’m not quite eighty yet.
‘Lenni!’ Pippa rushed over to me. ‘Look!’
In the corner of her whiteboard, she’d stuck a piece of paper on which she’d written in gold ink Lenni and Margot’s big idea, and she had made two tally marks for Margot’s painting of the baby and my terrible sketch of the video camera view of my first birthday.
‘Two down, ninety-eight to go!’ she said, as she picked up some sheets of paper and followed me to the table. Margot was already sketching out something that looked like a mirror, hanging against patterned wallpaper.
I sat beside her and, when Pippa had bustled away, we gave each other a smile.
‘Shall I tell you a story?’ she asked.
Cromdale Street, Glasgow, 1940
Margot Macrae is Nine Years Old
My least favourite grandmother had arrived at our house one afternoon in 1939, several weeks after my father joined the army. My mother actually let out a little scream when she opened the front door on a dim Sunday afternoon to find my grandmother standing there with a suitcase. My mother couldn’t understand how it was that she had even heard about my father’s deployment. My father swore, in a letter from his training camp near Oxford, that he hadn’t mentioned his deployment to his mother and had no idea why she had suddenly appeared on our doorstep.
Now I don’t know whether to pray for my safety or yours, he wrote. There’s a bottle of whisky hidden under the sink.
I’d seen grandmothers at work and I knew them to be warm and sweet and kindly. Christabel’s grandmother made her nice dresses. My mother’s mother, who had died when I was five, had knitted a cardigan for me and another identical one for my doll so we could match.
The woman who stood scowling at us from the doorstep wasn’t like that.
My least favourite grandmother had a special perfume she saved for Christ. It was tangy and it stuck to the back of my throat. Every Sunday morning, she would stand at the mirror in the hallway and assemble herself for Jesus. It was a very specific look.
One Sunday morning in 1940, when the days were getting darker, I listened at my bedroom door. I could hear the ragged sound of her pulling a hairbrush through her thick mane. It sounded scratchy, and I often wondered how it was that she hadn’t ended up bald from the fury with which she brushed.
I could hear my mother clanking in the kitchen, recognizing the sound of the pan that she used to try to resurrect powdered egg into something resembling food.
I crept down the stairs, hoping my grandmother wouldn’t notice me.
She was pinning her Sunday hat to her head, sliding grips all around the edge. She fixed me with a stare.
I carried on down the stairs and found my mother in the kitchen. Her face was pale and drawn and she was staring down at the powdered egg in the pan, not moving.
‘Did he die?’ I asked. My father was in France now and when my mother’s face looked like that, my stomach would twist and I would prepare for the telegram.
‘No,’ she said quietly, her eyes fixed on the pan.
‘Are you talking about your father?’ my grandmother called from the hall, where she was now staring, unblinking, into the mirror as she curled her eyelashes with a terrifying metal contraption.
‘He might be dead, you know,’ she said. ‘In pieces on a field somewhere.’
At this my mother looked up, and I saw that all around her eyes was red.
‘And you can’t even be bothered to pray for him,’ my grandmother carried on, clamping the metal down on her lashes.
My mother opened her mouth as though she were going to say something, but closed it again.
‘Imagine that,’ my grandmother said, ‘a wife and daughter who can’t even take the time to ask God and all his angels for their dear father’s protection.’
My mother put down the wooden spoon and used her hands to wipe the tears under her eyes.
‘Only God can help your father now, Margot,’ my grandmother said, placing the eyelash curlers down and leaning closer in to the mirror to inspect her work. Satisfied, she pulled the thin glass bottle of her sickly perfume from her vanity bag and began spritzing it on herself. Three sprays on the left wrist, three sprays on the right. Three on the neck, three at the waist. As she did, she began singing. She had a thin, watery voice, but it carried.
‘Soldiers of Christ, arise and put your armour on.’
My mother went to the cupboard for salt and pepper as more tears came.
‘Strong in the strength which God supplies.’ My grandmother sprayed perfume all around her hair and then finished with three sprays on the brim of her hat, singing, ‘Through His eternal son.’
My mother sprinkled salt and pepper onto the powdered egg and closed her eyes.
‘Strong in the Lord of Hosts and in His mighty power.’ The last thing left for my grandmother to do was to pin the red brooch to the left of her blouse.
The tears were coming faster than my mother could cope with.
I walked up to my grandmother.
‘Do you have a tissue?’ I
