Personality Read online

  ‘I’m sewd into this big dress. Don’t make me laugh or I’ll pee myself‚’ said Mary Queen of Scots to her friend Kalpana Jagannadham, dressed as Queen Victoria. The children were coming down Castle Street in a great procession, each child trussed in a historical costume, famous kings and queens mainly, and some whose parents couldn’t think came as knights or Picts or Tudor ladies-in-waiting. None of the costumes came from a shop, they were all home-made: papier-mâché ruffs, cardboard crowns, plastic swords, cotton wool for ermine, kitchen foil for crown jewels. Holding hands, the children marched down the street two by two. Maria and Kalpana were the two oldest girls, chosen because of their ‘theatricality’, but the parade and all the excitement was making them feel like infants again. They walked at the front, sighing, whispering and giggling between themselves, whilst the well-rehearsed children behind them, picked out of Bute’s several primary schools, marched under the nose of their sergeant major, Mrs Jean Ogilvie, the headmistress of St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Primary School.

  Rosa had made an early claim for Maria to go as the Scottish Queen, and got out the sewing-machine and made a flouncy dress out of net curtain material. Giovanni was brilliant: he’d made a giant collar out of polythene and coat-hangers. Mrs Bone had let Maria borrow a long red wig she had in a box of hairdressing stuff in the back bedroom, and Rosa spent a whole hour that morning patting Maria’s face with white powder. Kalpana, who was Indian and Scottish and Maria’s best friend, the daughter of Dr Jagannadham – everybody called him Dr Jag – wore a black gown her father had kept from his days at Glasgow University. It was gathered at the bottom over bundles of saris and held together with safety pins. Dr Jag threw his head back and laughed that morning when she was finally dressed and ready to go. Mrs Jagannadham had sprayed Kalpana’s hair grey and put a line of cotton wool down the middle. She wore Wellington boots on her feet and carried a little ball and a bicycle pump covered in silver foil. Seeing her come down Castle Street, her brown face frowning over her lacy collar, Dr Jag thought she was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

  ‘Even on a nice day you are the notice box, Fiona Wallace‚’ said Mrs Ogilvie, keeping the kings and queens in line with her tan-coloured handbag.

  ‘I never said nothing, Mrs Ogilvie‚’ said Elizabeth I. ‘I never. I always get the blame. Michael McArdle was pinging my earrings so he was.’

  ‘Lift up your sceptre, Fiona. You’re a notice box that’s all you are. And you, Maria: there’s no need to look so torn-faced. You’ll find your pretty, half-French head is still attached to your shoulders. William Auld, I’ve told you before. Richard the Lionheart is in many respects a mysterious figure, but we can be almost certain that he did not suck his thumb and pick his nose at the same time.’

  Queen Victoria spoke with a pure Glasgow accent. ‘Your dress is that nice‚’ she said, marching forward in her wellies at the front of the line, ‘and the neck thing really suits you so it does. I’m no joking. It’s lovely. Do you think they made them wear these collary-things because of the, what do you call it … love bites?’

  ‘You’re terrible‚’ said Mary Queen of Scots, scanning the crowd in a regal way. ‘Look, the Primary Ones are going daft.’

  All the Primary Ones wore black sand-shoes and each child was sporting head-horns (they were meant to be Vikings).

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake‚’ said Mrs Ogilvie. ‘Would the mothers please, oh no, good heavens, mothers, I need your assistance here!’ Many of the mothers were following the procession from the pavement, walking alongside and making sure their kid’s costume wasn’t falling apart. Dr Jag was still laughing and taking Polaroids all the way down. Victoria Regina would occasionally look over and smile her lovely smile. ‘I’m no joking, Maria‚’ she said, ‘this is a total brass neck.’

  The Primary Ones – the Vikings – had got jammed up behind a car outside Gregg’s the Baker, and some of the boys were busy lifting up their tunics and peeing into the road. ‘Young ladies, turn your heads please. Jesus, Mary and Joseph‚’ cried Mrs Ogilvie, ‘please mothers, could you take your respective children in hand. This is quite appalling. No, Fergus Tully. Fergus Tully! Do not sit down! Do not take your pants down! Mrs Tully!’

  The procession of kings and queens came down Castle Street and turned before the harbour. Mary of Orange had a giant beehive hairdo and one red glove (Mrs Ogilvie said to her colleagues her father wouldn’t be reasoned with). The girl came up to Maria and Kalpana with jam smeared over her chin and a soda scone in her red hand. ‘There’s rhubarb jelly and custard as well‚’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs, ‘and hundreds of eggs this size and chocolate and a lucky bag for everybody if they behave.’ She was talking quickly and waving the scone. ‘And you get a present even if you don’t win a race or anything.’ Kalpana took hold of Maria’s blood-stained handkerchief (an object in mind of her slain lover David Rizzio) and shook it in the girl’s face. ‘Get lost, scabby Babby‚’ she said.

  ‘Barbara!’ shouted Mrs Ogilvie. ‘Who gave you permission to go ahead to the dinner table? Get to the back of the line you greedy girl.’ Mrs Ogilvie drew a hand across her forehead and looked as if she were now having words with some higher authority. ‘Watch her‚’ she said, ‘she’s a bad article.’ The children marched in their ramshackle fashion. ‘Kalpana‚’ said Mrs Ogilvie, ‘the royal procession is now about to turn into the street named in your memory. I know you are the Mourning Queen, but you will straighten your face please. This is a happy day.’ Meanwhile, Robert the Bruce had climbed up on George III’s back. ‘This really is the height of nonsense. I promise I will have no hesitation in marching you children back up to the school if we have any more of your carry-on. Get back into your twos and holding hands. We’re coming up to the corner now. Okay. Mary Queen of Scots and Victoria Regina, the elder girls, set a good example, raise your heads and walk in the royal fashion now. We must carry ourselves with the pride of the Anointed. Girls! Boys! Historians and patriots, historians and patriots!’

  Maria and Kalpana giggled and linked arms and fashioned their faces for good behaviour. And down they came, the children of Bute, crêpe paper, glitter and glue, the infants trailing their rags of bin bag. Mrs Ogilvie lifted her head and nodded to the bandsmen. ‘Here we are‚’ she called as they turned into the area of the street party, ‘the Royals, in our excellent dresses, made to measure for their royal majesties by our excellent mothers of Argyll and Bute. Make way friends, countrymen, the children have arrived.’

  The children rubbed their noses and darted their eyes. Local people were gathered all round the entrance to the pier, at the corner of Victoria Street, where the biggest table in Britain began. The people cheered and waved Union Jacks and Scottish flags, some shouting out names for children to turn around, others waving tumblers and cans of beer. The sun was scorching now and many of the mothers stood in bikini tops and some of the men roared out and others just stood on the putting green, looking impatient, blowing smoke-rings over the Firth of Clyde.

  ‘Cavalier by name, cavalier by nature, David Dolan‚’ said Mrs Ogilvie, primping her hair and looking down the royal line. ‘I’d ask you to keep with the procession, and woe betide anyone who opens that can of beer. If you must hold it, David, then keep it unopened and out of reach of the infants. Do not shake it up and down in that fashion.’ David Dolan’s dad had thought it a good idea to give Charles II a can of McEwan’s Export to carry with him on the march. Mrs Ogilvie licked her lips. She put a Mint Imperial in her mouth as the procession came to a halt in Victoria Street. ‘One at a time now‚’ she said. ‘Find your places at the table and no pushing.’

  From a flat above the sports shop a noise suddenly flooded the street as the window was raised; a couple of teenagers with spiked hair were holding a speaker out of the window, playing a record at top volume. ‘Heathens!’ shouted Mrs Ogilvie, letting her eye-glasses swing on their chain among her Sunday pearls. ‘Close your ears children – we have barbarians in our midst!’
r />   The two punks had only a brief triumph, for very soon a large hand came from behind their heads, and each was dragged back into the room in a flurry of slaps. The record scratched to an immediate halt, to be replaced only seconds later with Nana Mouskouri singing ‘Morning Has Broken’. ‘The divine right of succession‚’ said Mrs Ogilvie, walking with her tribe as they found their seats at the table, ‘is second only in my mind to the right of the saints to intercede on our behalf, or on behalf of the poor black babies who need God’s help. Barbara Auld, put that cake down if you know what’s good for you!’

  Maria and Kalpana sank smirking into their ruffs. ‘Please miss, what is that?’ said Kalpana. She pointed to a silver airship floating over the bay. ‘That is a blessing from the county council‚’ said Mrs Ogilvie, ‘but you may feel free to comprehend it as a tear from the eye of the Baby Jesus. He weeps at behaviour such as that of those heathen boys in the window a moment ago. Now, girls, as you take your places at the Jubilee table please remember your good intentions and be in mind of the black babies who are less fortunate than ourselves. Come along the little Vikings! The feast is prepared.’ Most of the children had no idea what Mrs Ogilvie was talking about, but they lost no time in pushing back their crowns and horned helmets and diving for the cakes, whilst the mothers came at their backs with tissues, cameras and special cups.

  Rosa removed the red wig and took a brush to Maria’s hair. ‘Try to keep yourself nice for the cameras, baby‚’ she said, tying her daughter’s hair into a short ponytail, then passing a tub of ice cream down to her from the other side of the table. Maria loved the cold feeling of the ice cream on her tongue and the sweet jelly she sucked from the spoon. Out in the bay, around the warship, the water sparkled, and on the deck the sailors stood to attention as the Union Jacks waved above them. Maria and Kalpana smiled at each other, rolling their eyes at all the antics; they looked out at the ship and filled their mouths with chocolate cake.

  3

  Glorious

  The old Mrs Tambini lived at 3 Morrison Terrace. Up on the headland, with the window open, she felt the breeze, and stood back for a time with the fresh wind moving over her, looking down into all the colour and all the fuss of the day.

  I wonder what kind of gas is inside that balloon because they can be dangerous so they can.

  For a moment her thoughts seemed to join with the breeze to tumble and fade outside the window.

  Good God if this is not a day for people to bloody enjoy themselves and good for them. The church spire is bright enough good God it’ s nice and the weans you can hear their voices and all this happening in front of the Firth just as it is.

  Her bluish hair, watery eyes and polished skin gave Lucia a look of constant freshness. Her lips were fairly tight but often she relieved them with a kiss of Avon lipstick. There was a mystery in Lucia’s manner, and in repose, in her off-guard moments, a look of forgotten hopefulness would cover her face. She stood at the window only long enough to feel pleased about the Jubilee party. She could see the long table and all the flags as well as people running about and cheering on the putting green. Adults were gathered around the pier and the doors of the pubs were crowded. After she had taken it all in, she began to feel a chill in one of her eyes. She walked back across her living-room carpet and turned on a bar of the fire, then she flicked a finger at the spider plant sitting on her dining table before lifting up a pair of lace gloves and a needle. The table was covered in gloves of the same sort; she counted twelve pairs and one glove that was odd. Into the living-room with the Glade air fresheners at each corner came a smell of something like gunpowder. It must have been the bangs from the ship. She looked out the window again and the children were cheering; you could hear that much over the music. She closed the window against the smell and sat down again with the glove and the thread and the needle in her lap.

  Lucia Tambini kept watch for the moments of grime in other people’s lives, and her loneliness was a vigil against cruelty and vice in those around her. This one and that one – Mrs Clarty Housewife or Mr Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do – got low marks in her book, and it was a book, after all, set high on the shelf of her own experience, a life of good management and strong hopes undercut by the suddenness of grief. Inside her room Lucia kept watch: I will make a cup of tea and then go to bed at nine, she would say, and one day people will appreciate me for who I was. Good night she would say and God bless the best amongst you. All the evenings since Mario died, she went to sleep with the slow-breathing certainty that people failed to live their lives decently.

  Although Mario had been good and easy-going, she now tended his memory in such a way as to make his goodness serve as a rebuke to others. Saying her prayers sometimes she asked God to make her less of a wife and more of a mother. But that was not easy. He was dead eight years – she remembered his eyes on the television the night he died, it was the night of the moon landing. She had put him into his bed and he had coughed some more and the children had looked on. ‘Wait a minute‚’ he said in the bed, and when she looked up from her needlework his eyes were dead. Mario Tambini had died of a stroke at the age of sixty-four. And now it was her daily task to address his forgotten standards, and in this way she made her days noble for all to see, though in her heart she was simply lonely. She missed him. She missed her husband and found it hard to live with the things she had never managed to tell him.

  Good night. This is my life. One day years ago he sang a song I only heard it once and I can’t remember the name it was one of the old favourites and the line he sang more than once that day roughly went on to say well duty is stronger than dreaming. Good night. Good night. Forgive me Mario and duty is stronger than dreaming.

  Lucia had fallen asleep in the chair. In the living-room, a picture of Mario at the fish-fryer was over the fireplace. One time he said Take that down it’s just hypocrisy, but no, she loved the picture being there. She had slippers with zips on them and sometimes she laughed as she put them on to think how cosy they were. Next to that on a string were her rosary beads blessed by the Pope. And on the back wall above the clock was a mirror held up by a chain and next to that a standard lamp which shone on a picture of the Blessed Virgin with her eyes raised up.

  The gunpowder smell was gone and only Glade perfumed the air of the living-room. When Lucia woke up she put the glove back on the table with the others. In the kitchen was a bowl of black bananas. From the top of the fridge she lifted a small box and she put on her overcoat and put the box in the pocket of the coat. She often went down to the town in her slippers. The leaves of the spider plant shuddered after she banged the door shut.

  *

  Maria was halfway through a bar of Highland Toffee, and she was rushing to finish it, ready for a Sherbet Fountain. Kalpana dug her hand into her own Lucky Bag, and, with a mouth all stained with red Cola, she shouted for the men doing well in the adult sack race. Kalpana said she wished she could whistle properly like the older boys. The girls jumped up and down and stuffed their faces and rubbed off their make-up with their sticky fingers, all the while feeling hot in their royal robes.

  ‘Come on, Dr Jag‚’ shouted Kalpana, using her father’s forbidden nickname, ‘get your arse in gear.’

  ‘Oh-ay‚’ said Maria, ‘you swore. You’re gonnae get us into trouble.’ Mrs Ogilvie was still stalking the putting green, and plucking Vikings out of the rhododendron bushes; she kept wagging her long finger, and here and there she offered impromptu lectures on some unexpected manifestations of the Holy Trinity.

  Giovanni and Rosa were good the day of the Silver Jubilee. They were always somehow better when they’d had a drink. Giovanni waved over to Maria and her wee friend, and he grabbed Rosa by the waist and swung her round. She dusted herself down and shook her head as he slugged from a pint. They were with a crowd of their friends, making jokes, supervising games, and Rosa only showed her usual embarrassment when Giovanni went too far, like when he tried to kiss her too much on the mouth. Giovanni was the
most handsome man on Bute. His appearance was judged to be one of the local attractions, and because the man was a stranger to the truth about himself, the scrapes he got into – all the noisy, familiar troubles and badness – only made people love him more, surmising there must be something very like themselves in the chaos that existed behind his perfect face.

  Maria would sometimes put her sweets away when Rosa looked over, fearing a telling off, but all her mother did when she looked over that day was wave at her with a grand smile. One of the times she licked her hand and smoothed the side of her hair, just to tell Maria to keep herself tidy. The children rushed out from the table, and Giovanni put Maria up on his shoulders as the horn went off for the guns. They all cheered when the bangs went up and the smoke came rolling over the bay, then went quiet for a minute as the ship’s band played ‘Rule Britannia’. Giovanni held Maria’s leg with one arm and put the other arm over Rosa’s shoulder. He didn’t move his eyes from the ship when Rosa tried to wipe a dirty mark off his chin, dry blood from the night before.

  Another procession was soon coming down Castle Street. Giovanni put Maria on the grass and said ‘For Christ’s sake’ and then sloped off in the direction of the Athletic Bar. Maria could hear a drum banging and hundreds of flutes playing at the same time. Kalpana came running up. It’s the fucking Orange band‚’ she said. She didn’t see Rosa standing on Maria’s other side.