The policeman told mum, dad was in jail. She told him that she had just been released
Shortly after the day they brought my brother home, a minister arrived at my parents’ door. “I’ve heard that you’ve done a kind act and adopted a coloured child,” he says to me, my mum said.
“We at the Church just wanted you to know if we could be of any assistance,” as if he was thinking of you both as noble savages. “I sent him packing,” my mum told me. “I’ll tell you what’s savage, the Scottish Presbyterian Church!”
I don’t know if this really happened, the minister on the doorstep, but my mum used to insist that it did, though I also know that I have inherited, if inherited is the word, and perhaps it is, her gift for exaggeration.
“Did I tell you of the time that I was locked up in a church?” my mum says. “Your father and I were both arrested at a protest against Polaris. Your dad was taken to the gaol in Dunoon, but they ran out of space in the gaol, there were that many protesters, so they locked me and other women up in the Catholic Church.
“That’s the most time I’ve ever spent in a church,” my mum said laughing. “Mind you, I got out before your father. I remember being back at home and the policeman turning up at the door and saying “Do you know your husband is in prison?” and me saying ‘Aye and I’m just out.’ Your grandmother was very judgemental about it all. Well, she was very Godfearing. I remember your dad and I were both fined, ten pounds each, which was a huge amount then, and it wasn’t fair, two from the one family.”
My mum never got on that well with my other gran, my dad’s mum. I remember her saying that the only good thing my gran had to say about her was that she was a “neat walker”.