People who tattooed my life #9: Pat MacLennan

 I was never a fan of children as a child.  Or as a young man in fact. As seedling ambitions for my life emerged in my mind, kids didn't play a part.  I wanted my own place to live. Near a Banks's pub naturally, and, I hoped, somebody to love. A “Good job”.   A “nice” car. Nothing beyond that.

When we were horribly young Kayla and I met and fell in love and decided to share our dreams and lives together.  Wonderful times as our simple dreams came true: we got “good jobs” that allowed us to save, and made our folks proud.   In turn we were able to buy a house together, and we fixed it up in the year before we got married in 1986, but it never occurred to either of us to start a family.

By the age of 27,  things were going pretty well for us. Kayla had travelled a bit, myself not at all, so we bit the bullet and went on an overseas holiday. It was like Mars to me…but I loved it.  Our house was modernised and decorated within a inch of its life. A new job bought me nice company cars. We had a few once-in-a-lifetime holidays : Florida, Egypt, Rural Greece ... we were and remain staggeringly grateful.

By 1991 there was an imperceptible “air” in our life. Neither of us knew what it was but we knew there was "something". We were very much in love, but there was “something”.

As some know, Kayla’s Mom chose to not be a part of her life from when she was a young child. That perhaps is for another story another day, but Kayla told me then that she was tired of carrying hurt about  it.  She found out where he Mom lived and contacted her, planning to visit and restore some semblance of a relationship between them. I was more than happy to support Kayla in this, and so I planned us a long weekend in Easter 1992 to visit my mother-in-law and her family in Nairn, Scotland. I’d not visited Scotland in my life, and I thought it might help de-stress the mother and child reunion.

We duly packed my sporty little Clio with shellsuits and shoulder pads ( this was 1992!) and set off for Nairn.  It’s a long old drive, but even after seven hours, we were so gobsmacked by the scenery around Loch Ness we stopped in a layby just to watch with our mouths open.  Incredible. I’m sure Nessie wouldn’t have minded that I weed in a corner of her Loch either… it was a very long drive !

Just before dusk we arrived outside the modest but pleasant looking house where Mrs MacLennan lived.  A very fat man in a dirty white vest greeted us effusively. This was Sandy, Kayla’s mom’s husband of ten years. He had obviously been drinking, but his personality shone through. A lovely man whose genuine bonhomie compensated for Kayla’s mom not being at home when we arrived.

Sandy showed us to the spare room where we would spend our time at the Maclennan’s house.  Sandy and Pat had great jobs attending Nairn Golf Course, keeping it at championship quality.

We enjoyed about an hour of Sandy’s embarrassed apologies for his wife’s absence and well intentioned golfing anecdotes when Pat Maclennan arrived.  I never knowingly met a witch, but I suspect that would be a warmer engagement than we received from Pat. No eye contact, no offered hand to shake. “Hello, you made it then?”.

“I’ll go and put the dinner on” she said and wandered into the kitchen. It was now 9 PM and we were starved.  I said “ Please don’t worry on our part Mrs Maclennan , why don’t I go and fetch a Chinese takeaway or something to save you the trouble ?”

A menu was duly bought and handed to me. I gathered everyone’s orders  and I set off to the restaurant. When I returned with food an hour later there were still no great conversations going on, but Kayla was looking at what appeared to be a needlework project that her Mom was showing her.  Everybody ate, in near silence with the TV blaring away. Sandy was hitting cheap scotch hard by now and was slurring. Once we ate Kayla and I cleared away the cartons and washed up plates.  “We’re really tired, so if you don’t mind we’ll get to bed – Night”.

“Night”. Nothing;

When we got to bed Kayla was very upset. Seems Mrs Maclennan had been showing Kayla the wedding dress she was hand making for Kayla’s half sister Jane that she’d had with another man after abandoning Kayla and her sisters as a babies.  She was so effusive about the wedding, and all of her second family, and this really hurt Kayla. She’d wanted to ask her “why did you abandon us?” but  she couldn’t bring herself to.  Kayla told me that while I was collecting dinner, Mrs Maclennan had said to her “ You may see Jane’s family tomorrow, if so please don’t call me “Mom” in front of them. “Pat” is far less confusing.”

I held Kayla.  “Do you want to get the f*** out of here as soon as possible baby ?”

“Yes”

I woke at dawn, and roused Kayla.  We packed silently and left before Sandy or Pat were awake. We had no idea where we were going so I pointed my car “north”.  The road up Scotland’s east coast cannot easily be described. “beautiful” just fails miserably to convey the profoundly affecting vibrancy of the hugely varied scenery.  The sun rose above rain clouds as we passed Dornoch and we had a cadence of rainbows all the way down a mountain pass. Stunning. We had lunch at John O’Groats ( well you have to ! – Oh BTW its a fly blown crap hole!) and pointed south to drive….nowhere in particular.

By evening we had reached Loch ness again and we drove gratuitously along her beautiful  shores , then on to Loch Lochy and finally Loch Linnhe.  It was getting dark and I’d had enough of driving so really didn’t want to press on to Fort William. Kayla spotted a sign in front of a grand Georgian manor house “ Cuilcheanna House – accommodation”.   I pulled onto the drive, we got out and knocked.

A small Scottish lady opened the huge creaky door and smiled widely  – Yes they DID have a room, would we like dinner as the chef hasn’t gone home yet ?  What a famous welcome, wholly unlike the one we had received yesterday !

Dinner was gorgeous – we sat alone at a huge oak dining table before a log fireplace. We ate local wild mushrooms stuffed with crab to start, followed by chicken and bell peppers in whiskey cream sauce…. Washed down with a bottle of Entre Deux Mers .  Any malaise we had felt had gone, Kayla was on good funny form once more and we laughed and loved as we warmed ourselves striped by dancing flames glow. We were liking Scotland very much !

Full and happy we retreated to the bar: a large and friendly room with gamekeepers and colourful locals telling tall tales in the warmth of an inglenook fireplace that occupied an entire end wall.  We nursed large , lovely previously-unknown whiskies and listened.

I had to speak and said “ Baby, you know we’ve had so many adventures but I can’t help feeling we have a big one left to do.  NO pressure but what do you feel about starting a family? After all I couldn’t do a worse job of it than that witch !”.  I said this very clumsily.  Kayla grinned and wept and hugged me. “I have been feeling exactly that way for a while , but I didn’t want to say anything that might upset our life”.

It was scary but liberating for this boy who never knew how to treat kids to articulate this primeval instinct I had felt to start a family. Somehow the dreadful example of Pat Maclennan had inspired to me to make a better fist of parenting than she did. Our excited banter continued late into the night, with more whisky sipped.

We slipped to our lovely room in the wee small hours and fell warmly into each others arms.

 Something woke me just as dawn broke.  I got out of bed to get some water and pulled one of the huge drapes back. The lawn between our hotel and Loche Linnhe was dotted with deer feeding on the fresh morning grass: does and kids. Yes, I think we made the right choice.

Katie was born the following year J

Mrs Maclennan never saw or heard from Kayla again. She eventually abandoned even her second family to drink and live unencumbered by responsibilities. She died alone, having lost limbs through helpless alcoholism in 2007.   Her choices caught up with her eventually.