to you. Grannie Helen always said they should have gone on the stage. Charlie and Pete, “Dean and Hook”—it could have worked. Charlie the little bouncy joker and Pete, like some older brother, the tall, slightly solemn straight man. Have fun, have fun.
My dad had never had to fly off to his highly possible death, he’d had a rather different war. He’d spent it cracking codes in the safe and cosy depths of the English countryside, pleasantly surrounded, so far as I can glean, by lots of young female clerks, typists and telephonists, some of whom came from far from lowly backgrounds, but were doing their humble bit.
And among them was my mother, Fiona McKay. The Scottish thing may have been entirely coincidental or it may have been the clincher. Do Scots attract Scots?
How do our parents get together? Do we need to know? You once seemed pretty keen, Kate. Here are
my
speculations, anyway. I think my father’s war was, in fact, a bit of a holiday from his earnest and industrious dedication, up till then, to the law. I think it was his version of Sussex in 1966 —if he was a good deal older than twenty-one. He would have been over forty. Life hits you at different times.
It had been a rather monkish dedication, perhaps. He’d never before been thrown so strategically among the girls. He’d never before discovered his own seductive talents. That is, in my father’s untall, unhandsome, but short and cuddly yet high-powered case, his talent for being ever so seducible. It amounts to the same thing, perhaps, if you can generally keep an eye on what’s going on. And a man who’d become a High Court judge ought to have been able to do that. A big “ought” as it proved.
It’s a lasting sadness to me, and it will have its extra stab tomorrow, that you never knew your Grandpa Dougie. But, of course, I never knew him
then.
Those days before we were born.
When I was in a state of less than imminence I think, or I hope, my father was having the time of his life. I think he was having fun. All because of the war. I wouldn’t dare to estimate
his
score, and perhaps it was never like that. But I know that it was Fiona McKay who in 1944 became his young war bride—twenty years his junior. Some fifteen or so years later, when I was a schoolgirl and she was approaching forty, she’d show the first undisguised signs of wanting to move on (was it so unpredictable?), but not without taking a good deal of what had really been his with her. War bride and future mercenary. And this, I’d realise, would make him vulnerable, even amenable, to the same process happening all over again.
Your Grandpa Dougie died in 1978, over a year before you were born. His funeral, unlike your Grandpa Pete’s, was attended by three ex-wives. Fiona was number one. You’ve never met her and, for the record, Mike’s only met her once—at that funeral. You know I don’t see my own mother: these things happen. When you were very small we used to call her, expediently, your “fairy grandmother,” as if this gave her an ethereal status beyond mere ordinary grandmotherness. She’s one of the never fully explained mysteries of your lives, though, believe me, not the only one.
9
YOUR DAD HASN’T lost his looks. I think he’s even gained some. I’m biased, of course. Under that tree in St. James’s Park, at least, the summer light did him proud. Or is it that his midlife success has given him a new lift, a new lease? Where do you separate handsomeness and success in men, handsomeness and achievement? Any thoughts, Kate? How the passing of time can be kind to them anyway. But perhaps I shouldn’t be thinking that right now.
It wasn’t always so. I mean, he was just handsome once, he was just Mike. The success wasn’t there. And should you demand it? Isn’t love more than enough? Professor Mike—I mean, a real true accredited Professor Mike—was waiting a long way down the road (it has to be said he’ll go on waiting) while your dad
My dad had never had to fly off to his highly possible death, he’d had a rather different war. He’d spent it cracking codes in the safe and cosy depths of the English countryside, pleasantly surrounded, so far as I can glean, by lots of young female clerks, typists and telephonists, some of whom came from far from lowly backgrounds, but were doing their humble bit.
And among them was my mother, Fiona McKay. The Scottish thing may have been entirely coincidental or it may have been the clincher. Do Scots attract Scots?
How do our parents get together? Do we need to know? You once seemed pretty keen, Kate. Here are
my
speculations, anyway. I think my father’s war was, in fact, a bit of a holiday from his earnest and industrious dedication, up till then, to the law. I think it was his version of Sussex in 1966 —if he was a good deal older than twenty-one. He would have been over forty. Life hits you at different times.
It had been a rather monkish dedication, perhaps. He’d never before been thrown so strategically among the girls. He’d never before discovered his own seductive talents. That is, in my father’s untall, unhandsome, but short and cuddly yet high-powered case, his talent for being ever so seducible. It amounts to the same thing, perhaps, if you can generally keep an eye on what’s going on. And a man who’d become a High Court judge ought to have been able to do that. A big “ought” as it proved.
It’s a lasting sadness to me, and it will have its extra stab tomorrow, that you never knew your Grandpa Dougie. But, of course, I never knew him
then.
Those days before we were born.
When I was in a state of less than imminence I think, or I hope, my father was having the time of his life. I think he was having fun. All because of the war. I wouldn’t dare to estimate
his
score, and perhaps it was never like that. But I know that it was Fiona McKay who in 1944 became his young war bride—twenty years his junior. Some fifteen or so years later, when I was a schoolgirl and she was approaching forty, she’d show the first undisguised signs of wanting to move on (was it so unpredictable?), but not without taking a good deal of what had really been his with her. War bride and future mercenary. And this, I’d realise, would make him vulnerable, even amenable, to the same process happening all over again.
Your Grandpa Dougie died in 1978, over a year before you were born. His funeral, unlike your Grandpa Pete’s, was attended by three ex-wives. Fiona was number one. You’ve never met her and, for the record, Mike’s only met her once—at that funeral. You know I don’t see my own mother: these things happen. When you were very small we used to call her, expediently, your “fairy grandmother,” as if this gave her an ethereal status beyond mere ordinary grandmotherness. She’s one of the never fully explained mysteries of your lives, though, believe me, not the only one.
9
YOUR DAD HASN’T lost his looks. I think he’s even gained some. I’m biased, of course. Under that tree in St. James’s Park, at least, the summer light did him proud. Or is it that his midlife success has given him a new lift, a new lease? Where do you separate handsomeness and success in men, handsomeness and achievement? Any thoughts, Kate? How the passing of time can be kind to them anyway. But perhaps I shouldn’t be thinking that right now.
It wasn’t always so. I mean, he was just handsome once, he was just Mike. The success wasn’t there. And should you demand it? Isn’t love more than enough? Professor Mike—I mean, a real true accredited Professor Mike—was waiting a long way down the road (it has to be said he’ll go on waiting) while your dad
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