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.In the monochrome photographs from my youth, he’d had the flawless, sculpted profile of a matinée idol, but his looks had faded, and he no longer turned heads.He was simply conspicuous rather than striking.As a child I’d thought he was tall, but now I towered over him – and it didn’t help that he was beginning to stoop.His hair was still thick, but it had turned a metallic grey, and it sat on his head like a clump of fraying wire wool.We embraced and exchanged a fleeting brush of lips on cheeks.It was an involuntary gesture to him, as instinctive as breathing, but it never felt natural to me, kissing another man – even my father – in public.‘You like da cheapskin?’ he asked.His accent threw me.It always happened when I’d been away for a long time and my ears weren’t tuned properly to his lazy, pidgin diction of short Spanish vowels mugged by a flat Glaswegian drawl.I knew from his reaction to my hesitation that he was irritated.He liked to think he was clearly understood.‘Da cheapskin? Dae you like da cheapskin?’‘I know what you said.Yes, I like your coat, it’s very nice.’I didn’t tell him I was trying to ignore it – this fur-trimmed, other-era garment, with its cash-up-front showiness.‘How much cost?’ he demanded.I hated it when he did that.‘You tell me, how much cost?’‘I don’t know, Papa.’He threw up his hands dismissively.‘I know you nae know, I ask you guess.You guess how much.’‘I really have no idea.Four hundred,’ I ventured, deliberately high.A look of unalloyed triumph washed over his face.‘Nae four hundred, nae even close.One hundred thirty.Only one hundred thirty quid.I get from this guy in, wha you call it?’‘Land of Leather,’ I said.He’d been buying his coats from the same Bangladeshi supplier for years.‘Si, in Land a Leather, in Barrhead.I get you one.You give me your size, I get you one.’‘I don’t want one.’‘Wha you mean, you nae want? Only one hundred thirty quid, you nae get cheaper nowhere.’‘Really Papa, I don’t want one.I’ve got plenty of coats.’‘Ach, I nae understand you, this is bargain, this cheapskin,’ he said as he turned on his heel and marched off.As winter’s early darkness fell, we chugged along Mosspark Drive to the reassuringly benign putt-putt sound of Papa’s Volkswagon Beetle, past the shops and the achingly familiar sight of the old swingpark, where I learned to ride a bike and smoked my first cigarette.I noticed how the passage of time had taken its toll on the neighbourhood, whose council-estate uniformity had been replaced with a surfeit of satellite dishes, stone-cladding and driveways populated with garish customised cars.The family-run shops were gone, closed and shuttered, replaced by a single mini-market with grilled windows covered in adverts for low-cost energy drinks and cigarettes.The car pulled up outside the compact, two-bedroom house in which I’d grown up.It hadn’t changed in any significant way since my youth.My parents were among the few residents who still rented from the council.‘Why I wanna buy a bloody house?’ Papa demanded testily whenever I tried to point out the financial benefits of owning property.‘If I wanna fix roof or windows, I phone the council.If I buy a house, I dae myself.’Mama had heard the car’s rasping engine and was standing on the doorstep, ready with a smile and a needy embrace.‘How is my boy?’ she asked, her accent as much Glaswegian as it was Spanish.‘I’m doing fine, Mama.’She eyed me sceptically.‘You don’t look fine, are you eating?’‘I’m eating.’‘But are you eating properly?’There was pathos in her concern that made me feel slightly sad – that I was in my mid-forties, with a family of my own, that I earned in a month what she and Papa lived on for a year, and yet she still felt responsible for my welfare.I stepped into the hallway and was met by the smell of lambs’ kidneys braising in sherry.I made my way upstairs to my old bedroom, which hadn’t changed since I’d shared it with Pablito thirty years before.I’d kept urging Mama to redecorate it, even offering her the money, but she said she didn’t have the heart [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]