Never Let the Saucepan Boil Dry Chapter 6: I Shall Arise, Part 1

I am sorry now that I did not attend Dad’s induction in Cromarty. I found it difficult to accept the pace of change, and what had happened in the church. I saw Keith on the Friday, and we went to a Doctor Who exhibition, housed in Brechin. On Saturday I went from Montrose to Donald and Cathy’s in St Cyrus. It seemed a long day. Andrew and Anne Wilma, whom I had known in the Aberdeen Youth Fellowship, were to come down and meet up. They did not, and there seemed to be a lot of phone calls. We went out for lunch. ‘Oh look,’ said Cathy, pointing at a children’s Wendy House in a neighbouring garden, ‘you could go and live there.’

    Then in the evening, the phone went again. Dad wanted to speak to me. ‘We are just overwhelmed with the sickness of this,’ he said, ‘but the manse has been broken into. Ronnie Bruce hired Securitas guards on behalf of the Free Presbyterian Church we left in 1989, showed them the title deeds, which still had their name on it, and told them it was illegally occupied, and got them to break down the door. Irene was sick on hearing that. I’m very sorry.’ He also commented that in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest passed by on the other side to avoid the poor man who had been beaten up and robbed, whereas in this case, it was as if the priest had crossed the road to do the robbing and beating up. The news was devastating, and I went quite numb. I did not really grasp it. Unlike my sister, as I have said before, I do not respond quickly, sometimes not as quickly as I would like. There remained the pressing question of what to do with our things. The APC were not going to contest the invasion of the manse. We were faced with the unpleasant prospect of going in to retrieve our possessions under the fierce gaze of those who regarded it as theirs since 1989, likely with some media attention to cope with too. This was in fact what we assumed had to happen for the time being.

     Donald drove me up to Aberdeen on the Sunday, and I went to stay with Aunt Liz in Westhill. The reality of it all did not hit home till the next day. Andrew was in touch to say the FPs had hired a removal company to remove our things. They were to be dumped in Liz’s garage. They arrived, and did so. At the end of it, they handed me a bill for their services. It did in fact have Douglas Somerset, the new incumbent’s, name on it, above the address I remembered filling in when first learning to write twenty years before: 18 Carlton Place. I explained I could not pay, and was not liable to in the first place. The men were unimpressed, then shrugged in a very Aberdonian way and went away. I phoned Cromarty. At the prospect of paying for my own eviction, I finally cracked, screamed and tore my hair. It seemed like the pit of all my prospects. Mum said she was sure it was a mistake (it was), and that I was more than welcome to come home to a family ‘who love you very much’. I went to Cromarty at the end of that week, for September. I had not altogether decided where to stay yet.

     Cromarty was a beautiful place, to some extent closer to Kinlochbervie in terms of Dad’s work. I appreciated its rich history and the views from the very large manse across the firth. I was to live in the former servants’ quarters towards the back of the house, with its own stairs going down towards the kitchen. I was more than grateful for it all, and for my parents’ care. I had one more assignment to complete for my OU course, known as a TMA. My motivation for this, like much of the rest of me, had been badly damaged by recent events. I had to search for these among the materials packed for me, somewhat randomly, by the removal men. I struggled to write on the Romantic poets sitting at a desk which had been in the guest room, the blue room, next to mine for some years. My bed was still in Aunt Liz’s garage, so I lay on a mattress in my room. Mum came in one morning. ‘I’m sorry to wake you, but that’s the third time Lisa’s called,’ she said. I deeply appreciated Lisa’s remembering me, and the link with Aberdeen. I liked the time of year. The first autumn in Cromarty was quiet and lovely, supplying the rest I needed after our eviction in absentia.

     I had still not abandoned my ideal to live independently in Aberdeen, and went back to stay with Liz for two weeks in October. It was not easy. I passed what was likely my worst ever birthday, but was still grateful Irene was there. I felt I had no choice but to relocate to Cromarty, and made arrangements to have my things moved up. I also took my first OU exam in Aberdeen, struggling very much with concentration and my overall health.

     I spent at least three months after the eviction in a state of constant pain and resentment at it. It did not do a lot for my spiritual life, or indeed any part of me. Adeline took the rare step of writing to commiserate in the aftermath. I continued to be very grateful for her. I started to heal just before Christmas. The APC took out an emergency injunction to safeguard the church building, only to remove it the following summer and effectively hand it to the FPs. Christmas also brought the exam result: I had failed, after passing the TMA component, but I had the option to resit. From the start, the OU courses were equally weighted between TMA and exam components, 50% each. I was relatively confident of passing a resit: it was not like my Highers, and there had been extenuating circumstances. I was to study Homer’s poetry and the classical Greek language the following year.

     The nature of my pain and depression was different this time, in that it had a relatively obvious cause. I woke daily in a state of raw pain. It also made me very very angry. I did not enjoy feeling like this. I looked forward to the new year, and to new studies. My parents were ‘scrambled’ again, and deserve every credit.

     The year 2000 was a slow recovery process. I grew more grateful for Cromarty, if also more aware of some of its limitations. I listened to an audiotape from the OU on Homer’s Odyssey on a battery-powered cassette recorder in April, during a power cut. The year passed, and I slowly grew more used to my environment. All the time, though, I saw it as an ultimately temporary measure, ahead of going back to Aberdeen to train as a librarian, and work there. I occasionally went to a writing group. I enjoyed a summer holiday in St Andrews, absorbing the history of the Cathedral and the adjoining St Rule’s Tower. Autumn came, and exams taken at home, with invigilator Mr Stone. It was the first time in my life I could have claimed to enjoy exams at all. My Mum served us tea halfway through, sitting in the grand dining room with its view of the large garden. I had reread the Odyssey the night before, with its detail of sacred cows lowing on a spit. This recalled my childhood fear of cows in Kinlochbervie, though not seriously.

     With the exam results near Christmas, I had passed my resit of Literature and done better than expected in Homer, but failed classical Greek. I opted not to resit it, and worked out I could complete my BA (Honours) degree in 2001 if I committed myself and was very, very busy. I had more confidence than I had ever had before. I took a Level 2 course on the comparative history of the various countries of the United Kingdom and France in the seventeenth century to replace the Greek, and Level 3 courses in Shakespeare and the nineteenth-century novel, as the culmination of the Honours degree I would not have been allowed to take at Stirling. It went better than I had expected. I enjoyed a visit to Perth in May, especially when I learned I had got 78% for my TMA on Antony and Cleopatra.

     We had another summer in St Andrews, where I was always busy in the evenings with more readings and note-taking. I was happy enough with the large workload, feeling I was advancing my prospects. My Stirling degree had been about other people’s expectations: now the OU one was for my own. I obtained my own computer in April with the help of a Cromarty friend named Kevin, and went online in June, when Keith paid what was to be his only visit there.

     In August we heard Granny was ill. She had been slowly losing her memory, resident in the Ballifeary Home of Rest since spring 1999. We heard there was a mass of some kind in her stomach. I went in to see her in the Home. She seemed tired, yet happy in another way. I saw her on the Thursday. On the Saturday morning, I was due to go to Dundee for my last history tutorial of the year. Dad came up to my room when I was transcribing the lyrics to a Bob Dylan song, ‘Precious Angel’, to say she had passed away. I cancelled my planned trip. She had always been concerned for my studies. Her funeral was well-attended the following week. I did not go to her interment in Stornoway, where she was placed next to her husband.

     Irene came home from Australia, where she had gone for a trip for the better part of a year, for the funeral. I used the large dining room in Cromarty for my study. I fought on towards the finish. I wrote on Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and the Sonnets for my final TMA. It seemed a long way since writing on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice back in March 1999. My three years with the OU were certainly the most fulfilling study I had ever had. In October, back came Mr Stone for my finals, with his briefcase and exam papers.

     I had my eye firmly on my next goal: my return to Aberdeen. I applied for and got a conditional offer of a place on the Robert Gordon University’s postgraduate course in Information and Library Studies, from September 2002, in Aberdeen. I also hoped to take part of the OU’s MA in Literature before then, from the following February. I haunted the Cromarty post office in the December mornings for my exam results. The one day I did not go down was when they finally came, on 20th December. I had been successful in gaining a BA (Honours) Open degree, as a 2.2. It is impossible to say how much this meant to me. My past academic failures were erased at one stroke, and now I had what I hoped was a bright future to look forward to. Again, I wished I could have shared this with Granny.

     My offer from RGU was made unconditional, and I determined to return to Aberdeen to study full-time. I could have taken it part-time, at home, over two years, but felt I had to learn to get used to living there again, to build and rebuild social connections in preparation for work.

     I took on the first of three modules counting towards the OU’s MA in Literature from February 2002, but was not on it for long. Despite preparing well for it and enjoying the variety of texts beforehand, I found literary theory to be too abstract and slippery, and was unsure how to deal with several aspects of it. It was disappointing after my success at undergraduate level. There was not the same kind of structure to it, or help available. I narrowly failed my TMA 1, and got very stressed on trying to find books in Aberdeen for the second one. I felt it was best to quit in April, and was relieved to do so. I still had to pay the fees.

     Then my graduation came up in May, and recompensed me for my recent difficult experience with the Masters. We all went down to Glasgow the night before, stopping by the Wallace Monument outside Stirling as an acknowledgement of my time there, and indeed a nod towards the very grimness of the Wars of Independence as an indication of my progress since I had studied there. I had been used to seeing it lit up in orange from ASH when phoning home. Here on Abbey Craig, William Wallace and Andrew Moray had planned the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. We went on to Glasgow. Dad said it reminded him of street preaching in the 1960s. The Royal Concert Hall provided a rich and splendid setting. I had never had an experience like that before, in my honour.

     I felt my time to depart for Aberdeen come ever nearer. ‘He’ll be leaving soon,’ said Irene to Mum. I made my previous difficulties very clear to the authorities at RGU and got a room intended for mature students, known to prefer the quiet life, at Garthdee, in the Square Tower. A support system was set up. I told myself the Postgraduate Certificate/Postgraduate Diploma/Master of Science course was only for a year, in any case, so even if I did not enjoy it, it would not last long. Mum and Irene came down with me, met again the next day, and left. It was similar and different to going to Stirling. I made a note of the Christian Union, and determined to involve myself with them. We had so often welcomed students to the manse in Aberdeen: now I was one myself. I still went over to the hospital, to see Adeline as an outpatient. I knew it might not be for much longer. The CU very welcoming on a Friday barbecue event, in a fading red light that still felt like summer. I attended Gilcomston South Church regularly, but never felt fully a part of it as I had hoped. On the other hand, I related very well to the CU people, from several different churches.

     The coursework started. I found it more interesting at the start of the week, in cataloguing and classification, more narrowly defined and more obviously related to library work, (mention volunteering in Cromarty Library 2001/2 and learning Dewey) becoming somewhat drier and more generally related to management, with financial management towards the end of the week. I would return to my flat and switch off for two hours on a Friday between classes, reading Enid Blyton. I found the ideal of ‘sharing’ a kitchen did not work in practice, with a loaf of bread I had bought and left there placed in the bin by someone else. I mainly ate cold food, and kept it in my own room after that.

     I went to see Mrs Walker, our former next-door neighbour on Carlton Place. I felt I had substantially moved on from the eviction, though it was strange to see our former house, the garden unattended and other people’s possessions viewable inside. I could walk on my own grave unscathed. I had washed my robes in the tribulation, and emerged on the other side. The inside of no 20 was rather similar to ours: semi-detached to it.

     I was elected to sit on a CU Committee regarding a combined carol service (between the CUs of RGU, Aberdeen University and the Hilton teacher training college) for December. I commissioned myself to write a sketch as part it, got a book of short sketches, and rapidly learned how to write these. I wrote a short piece involving a change of heart for the main character. There were four of us in it. The service (held in the Marischall Hall, where I had seen Dad graduate in 1991) seemed a success, attended by about 400 people. I had no nerves at all about performing, and worked hard to instil confidence in one of the others.

     Come the new semester in February, there was a change of offices in the CU, including the president. I found the new president’s regime difficult to cope with: particularly, an abrupt and intense switch to focussing on evangelising other students. I found a lot of the coursework very dry, and was scraping through the essays, as were most of the other 19 students. Placements were approaching for April. I hoped for something in a public library in Dingwall or Inverness. Most of our training was to be over by then. I left the CU early due to my placement, where I read out a farewell poem, citing Psalm 133 at the end. I was touched at their holding a farewell meal for me. I had come such a long way.

     My placement turned out to be with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, SEPA, in Dingwall for the duration of April, 2003. I was not altogether pleased to be in a management position, as the only librarian there, with my supervisor over 100 miles away in Aberdeen. I mainly got on with cataloguing.