SIGHT: TRYING TO SEE CLEARLY

WITH THANKS TO CALLUM HURLEY FOR THE PROMPTS AND THE TALK ABOUT BREUGAL.

When we sat down in the small lounge in the caravan in the caravan park, whose name I have forgotten, on the island, whose name I have also forgotten; I poured a whisky; Wendy would have had a cup of tea, the children; I cannot remember what they were doing.

Outside the window I could see the rip of the tide on the strait between the shores, so strong we could see standing waves. Beyond that there were mountains and a sky with both cloud and blueness. It was stunningly beautiful. What a lovely place to spend our first short holiday with the children.

I got up to get a book and settled on another sofa to read for a bit, but before I started, I looked through the window and though the view was wonderful the mountains were no longer there. Surprised, I looked through the original window and the mountains were back again. Confused, I shifted from one window to another and in one there were mountains and in another there were no mountains. Wendy joined in and we grew more and more baffled. It was only when we opened one of the windows that the vision through it disappeared to show us that it was some sort of misplaced reflection.

We loved this illusion which was so, so, real; which we could only disprove by more or less pushing our hands into it.

The twins were only four years old at the time and this was the longest time I had ever spent with them. A wonderful moment but also, I suppose, a test of our future.

When it was bed time, wee Charlotte realised her prized teddy was not with us. She reacted predictably, with rage and tears and screams and a refusal to go to bed. James battered by the noise joined in. In desperation Wendy stuffed some socks with paper and said that this was the new teddy. Charlotte held it, peered at it suspiciously and threw it away from her with renewed vigour in her temper as this teddy clearly was not her teddy. I cannot remember how the children ended up asleep but it was very dark by the time they settled. Wendy snuggled up to me, exhausted; I think she apologised for the shattered evening and I think I said it didn’t matter at all.

The next day we spent playing in the rocks and dunes by the short ferry crossing; spying on the passengers coming across. Giggling and rushing to hide as we all pretended they were some sort of frightening enemy, I can’t remember what; maybe they were monsters invading the island.

After that, with the children chattering, we walked back to the campsite holding their hands, until we came across the site owner’s house which was surrounded with fairy tale scallop shells. Louie had another meltdown this time, insisting she needed some to take back to the caravan. Eventually the owner came out, smiled, and gave her four beautiful shells, at which point her sobs stopped and we toddled back to our caravan.

The next day on the opposite side of the island by huge piles of old quarried slate we saw a sign to a children’s playground and walked to up to play at it. However, when we arrived, the gate was broken, the ground was covered in creepers, with the seesaw all tanged in vegetation. Then we saw the sign that said the park was closed but we played there anyway and loved it.

As the sun began to turn the sky bright with the late afternoon, we saw, at the edge of the park, so many bluebells under the trees which, when they were lit up, turned the place into a fairy tale grotto. We sat among the bluebells as the sun faded before driving back home, where we saw an otter crossing to the water, in the gloaming.

The day before we left, the children had become more used to me but it was probably a mistake for vegetarian me to try to cook sausages for everyone else on the BBQ. They were deeply charred on the outside and pink inside. So bad that no one could eat them. Despite that we smiled; the children had got over the loss of the teddys and cautiously, we decided it was all a success.

A few days later, with me back in the Highlands and Wendy back down in Argyll; I got a call from her to say that James was in the Sick Kids in intensive care in Glasgow. He had Ludwigs angina and had been placed in an induced coma.

I drove that day with my mind unable to see the future; hardly able to see the road. For the next few days, I drove Wendy to the hospital every day so she could sit in the waiting room or besides James who was hooked up to such an array of machines.

Her descriptions of the waiting room were like scenes from hell, as parents waited to see if their children would live and, of course, some didn’t. She and the children’s dad took turns to be there while I wandered the length of Byres road again and again.

Their dad did not know of my existence at that time and we did not want to introduce that fact just then.

I provided lifts, tidied, cooked and listened to each day’s news and tried to help Wendy believe it when the nurses told her it would be better for everyone if she got a good night’s sleep at home every night instead of exhausting herself with a vigil she couldn’t really do .

A week later, miraculously it seemed, James was better. We were told it would have taken an adult months and months to recover.

I remember that picnic in Geilston gardens; James still slightly unsteady but laughing with delight as he tumbled on the grass with Charlotte in the walled garden besides the remains of our picnic while Wendy looked at them with such love and such a shocked smile.

Years and years later, James is shrieking upstairs while gaming and Wendy and Charlotte are wittering in the sitting room about life and school and, and I am in bed relaxing into the weekend here in Argyll and so thankful that this became my life and I no longer BBQ sausages on the fire.

Thanks so much for reading this – to get copies of my memoirs START and Blackbird Singing do head over to Amazon or if you don’t like Amazon message me direct.