right.
Edinburgh was best clothes and afternoon tea with scones in the British Home Stores café. Birmingham was something else. To my six-year-old self, it was huge, dark and rainy, crowded with people who were unlike us in every way. I couldn’t understand what they were saying; I couldn’t figure out how the traffic worked; there were cars and buses everywhere. The house where we lodged was owned by a tall, striking Irishwoman called Maureen, who smoked all the time and watched over her tenants like a strict but benevolent headmistress, a woman who would rather have died than be seen without her make-up and lipstick, routinely obsessed with her personal appearance, but prepared to live in a house that was, quite literally, a midden. ‘I hope you like cats,’ she said, as she showed us to the single room we would occupy at the top of the house. ‘There’s not usually this many. Both my girls just had kittens.’
I watched my mother suppress her disgust. The stairway was oddly golden, bathed in a cool, syrupy light; it also smelled terrible, a mixture of smoke, cat shit and boiled vegetables. The understanding was that Maureen’s house was a cheap and decidedly temporary billet. On her side, Maureen seemed to think we were on the run from somewhere. She was careful not to ask questions, or act too curious, which only made my mother more awkward, as it began to register, over the first few days, that my father had spun our landlady a whole web of bizarre and unnecessary lies. The room was long and narrow, and contained two beds, an old wardrobe and a deal table. A mirror was screwed to the wall by the door, there was a battered bedside unit between the double bed where my parents slept and the narrower, not quite single bed Margaret and I had to share. The only light was a bulb overhead, almost obscured by a thick, crimson, velvety-looking lampshade with long, dusty tassels. Worst of all, it was unbearably noisy. As my mother said to Aunt Margaret, when we got back safely to Cowdenbeath, the walls were so thin, you could hear what the people next door were thinking before they said it.
We stayed in Birmingham for several weeks. In all that time, I never saw the centre, never went to any gardens or famous monuments, never had tea and scones. We were out in some anonymous, run-down district with all the other transient people who’d come looking for a fresh start – Irish and West Indians, mostly. I was fascinated by the Jamaican men, in their dowdy overcoats and trilby-style hats, like the detectives in old films, only black, with beautiful, soft voices that worked magic around them as they walked along, a magic I could hear but didn’t understand. Most of the time, though, I was scared. One rainy afternoon, I was hit by a car, just lightly, enough to knock me down, but nothing was broken and the driver was very good about it, calming my mother down, asking if she needed anything. It had been my fault: I’d stepped out into the road without looking, something I’d never done at home, but nobody was angry and, afterwards, my mother bought me a book. I remember it still: The Pomegranate Seeds and Other Stories , a piece of ephemera that was only a step away from being a comic, but had a proper story as well as pictures. It was stories from Greek mythology, so I imagine my mother thought it educational. I kept that book intact and spotless for years.
A week after the car incident, I came down with chickenpox. I had it first, then Margaret caught it. We didn’t mind having to stay indoors – my strongest memory of Birmingham, other than raw, itchy spots and traffic, was of rainy days and nowhere to go – but it was hard for my mother, with my father out labouring all day, and Maureen trying to help, coming into the room without knocking, bringing Kaolin and Morphine for the invalids and cups of hot, steaming tea for my mother, who could hardly refuse all this well-meaning assistance. I believe she did like
Edinburgh was best clothes and afternoon tea with scones in the British Home Stores café. Birmingham was something else. To my six-year-old self, it was huge, dark and rainy, crowded with people who were unlike us in every way. I couldn’t understand what they were saying; I couldn’t figure out how the traffic worked; there were cars and buses everywhere. The house where we lodged was owned by a tall, striking Irishwoman called Maureen, who smoked all the time and watched over her tenants like a strict but benevolent headmistress, a woman who would rather have died than be seen without her make-up and lipstick, routinely obsessed with her personal appearance, but prepared to live in a house that was, quite literally, a midden. ‘I hope you like cats,’ she said, as she showed us to the single room we would occupy at the top of the house. ‘There’s not usually this many. Both my girls just had kittens.’
I watched my mother suppress her disgust. The stairway was oddly golden, bathed in a cool, syrupy light; it also smelled terrible, a mixture of smoke, cat shit and boiled vegetables. The understanding was that Maureen’s house was a cheap and decidedly temporary billet. On her side, Maureen seemed to think we were on the run from somewhere. She was careful not to ask questions, or act too curious, which only made my mother more awkward, as it began to register, over the first few days, that my father had spun our landlady a whole web of bizarre and unnecessary lies. The room was long and narrow, and contained two beds, an old wardrobe and a deal table. A mirror was screwed to the wall by the door, there was a battered bedside unit between the double bed where my parents slept and the narrower, not quite single bed Margaret and I had to share. The only light was a bulb overhead, almost obscured by a thick, crimson, velvety-looking lampshade with long, dusty tassels. Worst of all, it was unbearably noisy. As my mother said to Aunt Margaret, when we got back safely to Cowdenbeath, the walls were so thin, you could hear what the people next door were thinking before they said it.
We stayed in Birmingham for several weeks. In all that time, I never saw the centre, never went to any gardens or famous monuments, never had tea and scones. We were out in some anonymous, run-down district with all the other transient people who’d come looking for a fresh start – Irish and West Indians, mostly. I was fascinated by the Jamaican men, in their dowdy overcoats and trilby-style hats, like the detectives in old films, only black, with beautiful, soft voices that worked magic around them as they walked along, a magic I could hear but didn’t understand. Most of the time, though, I was scared. One rainy afternoon, I was hit by a car, just lightly, enough to knock me down, but nothing was broken and the driver was very good about it, calming my mother down, asking if she needed anything. It had been my fault: I’d stepped out into the road without looking, something I’d never done at home, but nobody was angry and, afterwards, my mother bought me a book. I remember it still: The Pomegranate Seeds and Other Stories , a piece of ephemera that was only a step away from being a comic, but had a proper story as well as pictures. It was stories from Greek mythology, so I imagine my mother thought it educational. I kept that book intact and spotless for years.
A week after the car incident, I came down with chickenpox. I had it first, then Margaret caught it. We didn’t mind having to stay indoors – my strongest memory of Birmingham, other than raw, itchy spots and traffic, was of rainy days and nowhere to go – but it was hard for my mother, with my father out labouring all day, and Maureen trying to help, coming into the room without knocking, bringing Kaolin and Morphine for the invalids and cups of hot, steaming tea for my mother, who could hardly refuse all this well-meaning assistance. I believe she did like
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