“Good morning Mrs Travers, our daily woman what does, (but not a lot).”
“Good morning Your Majesty, I mean Mrs Wylie. Sleep well – did we?”
“Alas no. Indeed I would go so far as to say I had a pretty dreadful night.”
“Mr Wylie snoring again? You should sew a plug to the back of his pyjama top; that generally sorts them out. That’s what I did to Mr Travers, otherwise it was like sleeping beside Dixon’s Blazes, they ironworks south o’ the Clyde.”
“Did it work?”
“Well yes sort of, it kept waking him up and you know what men can be like when they wake up unexpectedly.”
“I take it you used a bath plug?”
“Well, actually more of a bath plunger, you know one of those two feet long iron things that Shanks of Barrhead used to supply with their baths.”
“I thought you didn’t have a bath.”
“We don’t. I acquired it when I worked for Cynthia Savage’s in-laws during the last Unpleasantness wi’ the you know whos.”
“I know that the Savages have always been odd, particularly Lady Savage. I blame being in pickles, it’s the vinegar. Why though would anyone give you their Shanks’ bath plunger?”
“Oh, she didn’t give it to me. I half-inched it.”
“Whatever made you do that?”
“She accused me o’ helping mysel’ to her last pair o’ Kayser Bondor stockings. It was her husband who had `em.”
“Not Sir Peter Savage, Chairman of the Glasgow Grocers’ Group?”
“The very same – only in certain parts of Glasgow, particularly those parts by the King George the V dock, he was known as “Paisley Patricia” on account o’ his trademark patterned evening coat made from an old shawl and trimmed wi’ mink.”
“He must have looked very odd.”
“Not really; he had good bone structure an’ great legs, hence they stockings.”
“So, I take it you took the bath plunger out of revenge, for being wrongly accused in the first place?”
“Nah! Anyone wi’ any sense would know that ma legs never suited 10 dernier, more like 100 dernier, sailcloth.”
“Come now Mrs T, don’t be so hard on yourself. After all you have had the difficult life of a Glasgow working class woman.”
“Aye living with multiple ‘relative deprivation’, ill-fitting wallies, a husband with carnation appetites and a son prone to criminality, not to mention a half – witted daughter-in-law who lives on doughnuts. It has’nae been easy Mrs W, but I have tried to look on the bright side. And that sociology course yous signed me up to has made me more self-aware and gi’en me an understanding o’ the class struggle and Marxist dialectic.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Just so long as you don’t join one of those fashionable folk groups. I couldn’t bear to see you walking around all day with one hand on your ear and a pile of leaflets in the other, inviting people to play a pair of spoons or on washboard.”
“Don’t worry we only do that at end of term.”
“You still have not really explained about Sir Peter.”
“Well quite early on I found out about his other life. It was the powder blue bouclé suit and sapphire earrings that did it. He knew that I knew, and we had an unspoken agreement not to mention a generous Christmas bonus that Lady Savage knew nothing about.
At least not until she was unable to find her stockings, which were needed to complete her ensemble for the reception, following the ‘Condiments in War Time’ conference held in Glasgow in 1943. He panicked – he had been sappling them through in his bathroom and had put them on the towel rail to dry; she was running around the house like a woman possessed in search of her stockings. To throw her off the scent he said he had seen me take them. I was not so mean as to give the game away, but I never forgave him and to throw a shot across his bow, I nicked the bath plunger. Old Sir Peter loved his baths almost as much as his three strand pearl necklace, but it was wartime and with shortages, he wasn’t able to have a bath until 1948.”
Secrets and Scrambled Egg
“Goodness Mrs T you are the repository of many secrets.”
“That’s what happens when yous let other people do yer dirty work Mrs W.”
“Point taken Mrs T. I wonder what you will say about us?”
“I wonder! Now I’ve made a fresh pot o’ tea. Would you fancy some scrambled egg on potato scones?”
“Sounds good to me, I need something to wake me up. Has Jasper had his? I know he was up early.”
“Aye, he had his usual – the full Scottish. He’s taken the car to the garage for new tyres and then he said that while he waited he would go to the library.”
“Is that code for the bookies?”
“A woman what does sees all, hears all and says nought.”
“I thought as much.”
“To change the subject Mrs Wylie before I feel the need to purloin elements of your sanitary ware, why couldn’t you sleep?
“Well apart from Jasper’s snoring, I had the most awful dream. It was so real, so frightening.”
“Had the duster coat gone out of fashion?”
“No! I dreamt, to misuse the words of the man who invented Scotland….”
“Johnny Walker? “
“No – the man who invented Scotland was Sir Walter Scott. And as I was trying to say, he said in his famous Waverley Novel, that it was “Sixty years since..”
“Since what?”
“Since the Jacobite Rebellion.”
“I’m lost.”
“Honestly, it does not pay to be erudite in this house. Rather than 60 years since, I dreamt that it was 60 years hence and that there was a national crisis.”
“You don’t mean another war?”
“No not exactly, it wasn’t clear.”
“Oh that’s good, because Vera Lynn would be 103.”
“Actually, it was some other kind of danger that no one had foreseen, and the nation was forced to stay at home and wash their hands all the time. It was difficult to get food and Izal toilet paper. All the politicians and journalists were saying ‘if only we had someone who could be a beacon in all of this, who could help us simply because they were simply marvellous at just about everything and could cheer the nation as well as provide a guide to gracious living in hard times’.
Now Who Could Possibly Save the Nation?
“Who did you have in mind?”
“Why me, naturellement.”
“Aye, of course, silly me. You’d be ideal. I hate to point this out, but even wi’ a ton o’ Pond’s Cold Cream, a breakfast o’ lemon juice every day and a ceaseless regime o’ Nice Toes, Naughty Toes, you are unlikely to be around in 2020.”
“Even I am aware of that Mrs Travers, although it seems a terrible waste of a unique talent. However, perhaps there is something I could do by way of a legacy? I could leave something for Gayle to present to whoever is in power.”
“Aye… you could write a sort o’ helpful instruction manual. After all instruction and direction have to be among your best attributes. Where would I be without them? In a right guddle and no mistake. Lorks a lummy!”
“You are so right Mrs Travers – ‘cometh the hour’, cometh the woman as I always say. I shall take my inspiration from Coward’s plays often written by Noel Coward, This Happy Breed, Brief Encounter etc., etc..”
“Whatever keeps your spirits up Mrs Wylie. Here you are some fluffy scrambled eggs and some nice crispy tattie scones. Tomato ketchup?”
Anything Does Not Go
“Certainly not Mrs T. The nation may be in peril 60 years hence, but we are not going to descend into an ‘anything goes’ sort of world. Purchased sauces and preserves are the certain road to perdition and to a society that cares only for the individual. I might as well go to the Post Office in carpet slippers for my family allowance or put unwashed milk bottles on the doorstep for the poor milkman to collect.
That’s the other thing Mrs T – I have reminded myself in my dream there were no milkmen, no cream boys, no travelling knife grinders, no greengrocers indeed few small shops. People went shopping in vast cities consisting of one or two shops.”
“Well that’s unlikely. Now seein’ as you don’t want any tomato ketchup, I suppose brown sauce is oot o’ the question.”
“The road to barbarism Mrs T.”
“Seeing as Mr W is oot and you have clearly a lot of thinking to do. What about a wee Bloody Mary?”
“Don’t mind if I do Mrs T.”
“Are you sure? It requires Worcestershire Sauce.”
“Its origins are noble so is perfectly acceptable, and not at all common.”
Sixty years Hence
The First Minister Speaks to the nation.
“People of Scotland, I am not going to sugar duster-coat things, even although we Scots eat a lot of sweeties. We face the crisis of our lives. Fortunately, an invaluable handbook has come to light, for that I thank not only the Minister for Health and the other one on my right who frightens the life out of us but, Professor Gayle Wylie of the very good varsity and her father our most famous Shakespearean actor, who is also quite good at Burns – Sir Sebastian Wylie Fox. This manuscript has come to light at the Home for The Terminally Overdressed, during grave times and I say to you people of Scotland, you must stay indoors, pour yourselves a wee swally, read and digest for it is without doubt simply marvellous. Or, in wur own language puir deid brilliant. I have given instructions that every household has access to ‘A (Gin) and Tonic For The Nation’ by the late Baroness Wylie of Waterside. Stay home, stay safe, cut back on the Irn Bru and think gracious living at an appropriate social distance. As the noble lady herself would have said,
à bientôt
(which is French for see yous later, but not tae soon or yous’ll be lifted by the polis.)
Muriel Wylie in her dreams
Copyright © 2023 Artemis Scotland - Website by Sensor Studios
