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Up to 2010
Life hadn’t worked out as Mary Collins had hoped, not at all. In fact, if she’d had a plan (which she didn’t) this definitely wouldn’t have been it.
In a strange way, her life had gone fast and slow at the same time. In her honest moments, she would admit that most days were interminably slow, like wading through a swamp. At the same time her life had seemed to flash by so fast for her to ever to have grabbed it by the lapels or even the bloody neck, and say, “Now, look here, Life, we’re going this damned way. OK!” It just passed her by too quickly.
Of course, there had been some bright spots (just enough to stop her giving up entirely), some glimpses of hope that kept her believing that elusive happiness was just around the next wee glass of wine ... glimpses of hope that usually died a sad old death that chocolate and red wine could not help her forget though, God forbid, she tried hard enough to forget that way!
She still had her dreams of long, languid, luscious Sunday mornings, rural views, sun filtering in, breakfast with a luscious chap, reading together, crosswords together, cuddling together, making love together ... all that stuff.
Somehow, that luscious chap had never materialised – well, not in any bed on any Sunday morning. There had been a few interested and quite-luscious chaps but, though there’d been dinners out, movies together and furtive snoggings in dark pub cubicles, none of them had gone the distance – any distance, really – and she now believed herself to be too old for a first marriage and children and too young for someone else’s second marriage. She just seemed to fall between the cracks in everyone’s life ... and her own life, too, it seemed.
She had left Dunfermline with such hope. This Scottish town, the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man of his time, had absorbed little of Carnegie’s wealth and her parents had absorbed even less. Her father, a butcher who left the house at 4.30am every day (perhaps that’s why she dreamed of long Sunday mornings as she’d had none), from the three-bedroom brick, terraced house they rented. Determined not to follow her family’s dogged wretchedness – her brother, Angus, also worked with his hands, as a welder – she had left with high hopes of emulating Mr Carnegie. Her slim five-foot three-inch frame, topped with long, luscious, black tresses, strode from the house that day, oozing confidence while her mind struggled, in vain, to hide her fear of the big, wild world out there.
She stayed with her Uncle Hughie but his Camden flat in London was no more than a bachelor pad and she soon found a job and a flat of her own. Hughie was fun to stay with but she’d told herself that she’d never make it if she was saddled down with others – success came to those who walked the high road alone. Perhaps, she sometimes ruminated, that was why she was still single ... though where the making it was, she never knew.
She always loved the fuzziness of the mist over the heath, with the sun quietly filtering through but, somehow, she’d ended up in jobs without fuzziness – all sharp edges, objective, serious and very urgent. She discovered her mind was more astute than others’ – she’d easily see what needed to be done, how to do it and who best to do it. Sometimes she’d get down and dirty, as Uncle Hughie would say, but she really couldn’t see why she should when she could order three people to do three jobs and do triple the work she’d do alone.
It wasn’t long before she was developing the hard edge of the business world she fell so effortlessly into. Her long locks were gone, replaced by a coiffure that needed little prissing and her black suits echoed those of the men she worked with.
Of course, her apartments had always been in the City, only minutes’ walk from work. What a stupid waste of time, spending hours a day on some train, tube or other, when you could jolly well be at work doing something useful. Mary was always the first to work, the last to leave and the first one home. Stupid to do otherwise.
Her brusqueness enabled things to get done and, though her Scottish burr softened the long, cold English vowels she developed, she was more feared than loved, more admired than liked. Maybe, unconsciously, her quick tongue kept people at bay, avoiding connection, closeness, and disappointment. Maybe ...
One psychic told her that she had put on weight to insulate herself from the harsh realities of the world. Another suggested it was an unconscious attempt to make her look less attractive and then avoid the abuse her mother had faced. Well, yes, there was a thinner woman in there, not screaming to get out but certainly hiding.
She did wonder why it was she often found herself back at Uncle Hughie’s lively little flat, surrounded by his theatrical and New Agey friends – all bright colours, edges as soft as the mist, quick, inconsequential and harmless tongues and no urgency about anything. Nothing mattered and yet everything did, with great passion. So unlike the sterile, uncommitted and cynical types she worked with. Maybe she just needed balance. Maybe, deep down, this lively Scottish lass was really a romantic, an artist, in disguise. A creator not a commander. Who knows?
One of Uncle Hughie’s more insightful friends had told her, sitting in his small garden on a Sunday afternoon amid a respectable collection of empty wine bottles, that she should grow her hair – that it was beautiful and it shone like the dew on heather. She had smiled, held herself in and later gone home to cry herself to sleep. As she’d lain there, she wondered, between sobs, if she’d lost something of herself or if there was another part she’d been afraid to lose.
