1
She is on the second floor of a tenement
From her front room window you see the cemetery
Her bedroom is my favourite: newspapers
dating back to the War covering every present
she’s ever got since the War. What’s the point
in buying her anything my mother moans.
Does she use it. Does she even look at it.
I spend hours unwrapping and wrapping endless
tablecloths, napkins, perfume, bath salts,
stories of things I can’t understand, words
like conscientious objector. At night I climb
over all the newspaper parcels to get to bed,
harder than the school’s obstacle course. High up
in her bed all the print merges together.
When she gets the letter she is hopping mad.
What does she want with anything modern,
a shiny new pin? Here is home.
The sideboard solid as a coffin.
The newsagents next door which sells
Hazelnut toffees and her Daily Record.
Chewing for ages over the front page,
her toffees sticking to her false teeth.
2
The new house is called a high rise.
I play in the lift all the way up to 24.
Once I get stuck for a whole hour.
From her window you see noisy kids
playing hopscotch or home.
She makes endless pots of vegetable soup,
a big bit of hoch floating inside like a fish
Till finally she gets to like the hot
running water in her own bathroom
the wall-to-wall foam-backed carpet
the parcels locked in her air-raid shelter.
But she still doesn’t settle down;
even at 70 she cleans people’s houses
for ten bob and goes to church on Sundays,
dragging me along to the strange place where the air
is trapped and ghosts sit at the altar.
My parents do not believe. It is down to her.
A couple of prayers. A hymn or two.
Threepenny bit in the collection hat.
A flock of women in coats and fussy hats
flapping over me like missionaries, and that is that,
until the next time God grabs me in Glasgow with Gran.
3
By the time I am seven we are almost the same height.
She still walks faster, rushing me down the High Street
till we get to her cleaning house. The hall is huge.
Rooms lead off like an octopus’s arms.
I sit in a room with a grand piano, top open –
a one-winged creature, whilst my gran polishes
for hours. Finally bored I start to pick some notes
oh can you wash a sailor’s shirt oh can you wash and clean
till my gran comes running, duster in hand.
I told you don’t touch anything. The woman comes too;
the posh one all smiles that make goosepimples
run up my arms. Would you like to sing me a song?
Someone’s crying my Lord Kumbaya. Lovely, she says,
beautiful child, skin the colour of café au lait.
‘Café oh what? Hope she’s not being any bother.’
Not at all. Not at all. You just get back to your work.
On the way back to her high rise I see her
like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Everytime I crouch
over a comic she slaps me. Sit up straight.
She is on the ground floor of a high rise.
From her living-room you see ambulances,
screaming their way to the Royal Infirmary.
1991
There are some stones that open in the night like flowers
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.
There are stones that shake and weep in the heart of night
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.
Why do I remember the blues?
I am five or six or seven in the back garden;
the window is wide open;
her voice is slow motion through the heavy summer air.
Jelly roll. Kitchen man. Sausage roll. Frying pan.
Inside the house where I used to be myself,
her voice claims the rooms. In the best room even,
something has changed the shape of my silence.
Why do I remember her voice and not my own mother’s?
Why do I remember the blues?
My mother’s voice. What was it like?
A flat stone for skitting. An old rock.
Long long grass. Asphalt. Wind. Hail.
Cotton. Linen. Salt. Treacle.
I think it was a peach.
I heard it down to the ribbed stone.
I am coming down the stairs in my father’s house.
I am five or six or seven. There is fat thick wallpaper
I always caress, bumping flower into flower.
She is singing. (Did they play anyone else ever?)
My father’s feet tap a shiny beat on the floor.
Christ, my father says, that’s some voice she’s got.
I pick up the record cover. And now. This is slow motion.
My hand swoops, glides, swoops again.
I pick up the cover and my fingers are all over her face.
Her black face. Her magnificent black face.
That’s some voice. His shoes dancing on the floor.
There are some stones that open in the night like flowers
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.
There are stones that shake and weep in the heart of night
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.
1993
On my father’s feet are the shoes of dead comrades.
Gifts from the comrades’ sad red widows.
My father would never see good shoes go to waste.
Good brown leather, black leather, leather soles.
Doesn’t matter if they are a size too big, small.
On my father’s feet are the shoes of dead comrades.
The marches they marched against Polaris. UCS.
Everything they ever believed tied up with laces.
A cobbler has replaced the sole, the heel.
Brand new, my father says, look, feel.
On my father’s feet are the shoes of dead comrades.
These are in good nick. These were pricey.
Italian leather. See that. Lovely.
He always was a classy dresser was Arthur.
Ever see Wullie dance? Wullie was a wonderful waltzer.
On my father’s feet are the shoes of dead comrades.
It scares me half to death to consider
that one day it won’t be Wullie or Jimmy or Arthur,
that one day someone will wear the shoes of my father,
the brown and black leather of all the dead comrades.
1993
My mum is on a high bed next to sad chrysanthemums.
‘Don’t bring flowers, they only wilt and die.’
I am scared my mum is going to die
on the bed next to the sad chrysanthemums.
She nods off and her eyes go back in her head.
Next to her bed is a bottle of Lucozade.
‘Orange nostalgia, that’s what that is,’ she says.
‘Don’t bring Lucozade either,’ then fades.
‘The whole day was a blur, a swarm of eyes.
Those doctors with their white lies.
Did you think you could cheer me up with a
Woman’s Own?
Don’t bring magazines, too much about size.’
My mum wakes up, groggy and low.
‘What I want to know,’ she says, ‘is this:
where’s the big brandy, the generous gin, the
Bloody Mary,
the biscuit tin, the chocolate gingers, the dirty big
meringue?’
I am sixteen; I’ve never tasted a Bloody Mary.
‘Tell your father to bring a luxury,’ says she.
‘Grapes have no imagination, they’re just green.
Tell him: stop the neighbours coming.’
I clear her cupboard in Ward 10B, Stobhill Hospital.
I leave, bags full, Lucozade, grapes, oranges,
sad chrysanthemums under my arms,
weighted down. I turn round, wave with her flowers.
My mother, on her high hospital bed, waves back.
Her face is light and radiant, dandelion hours.
Her sheets billow and whirl. She is beautiful.
Next to her the empty table is divine.
I carry the orange nostalgia home singing an old song.
1998