The day Uncle John died

Uncle John was born in 1923. That makes him dead. Because when you start with somebody’s age, you usually imply that, especially when he was about 90. He never made that landmark. He never got the Queens telegram, but he did get diabetes and a heart condition, and he was legally blind, although he was always quick enough at recognizing your voice. His legs would also fold and he’d go under. He didn’t let that keep him indoors. He used to go out every day and go to mass, or HOLY MASS, because anything to do with the Catholic Church made him push out his beating chest and raise his voice for the heavens to hear. My Dad was the same. I don’t think they started off that holy way, being brought up in a place called ‘The View’ or ‘Holy City,’ might have helped, but they kinda grew into it. It was a form of apartheid, were people’s names and the schools they went to, signalled what tribe you belonged to. Supporting Celtic was a religion. Supporting anybody else could only mean one thing; that you were a shitehouse. Uncle John and my dad weren’t very good at subtly. Wearing a simple cross signified that you were a Christian. A crucifix, with Jesus on the Cross, shouted out: HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. In an era were nobody we knew had tattoos Uncle John has Jesus on the Cross snaking all the way up and around his right arm. But it was always covered over with a shirt, in the same way that the same blue tattoo Jesus, with his crown of thorns, on the same Cross, stretched from the pit of his stomach spread armed and out on his chest, and looked down on Uncle John’s toes. If you listen to anyone from that era, they do this strange thing, they don’t listen to the mass, they recite the rosary, or address the beads. He passed them through his arthritic hands, because he also had rheumatism, from an early age and he would mutter an incantation to the Virgin Mary, or any one of the other prayers he imbibed on his mother’s knees. He would jump up and down with everybody else at mass as if he were part of a football crowd, but he would be in his own little world of incense and the clicking of his tongue. At the end of mass he would be dazed by the daylight and somebody would take his arm and offer to take him down the road, or across the road, or to the shops. Winter or summer he would have on his Russian hat; there was a story behind it, but I could never remember the start or finish, because it kept changing, like the weather. It was the kind of hat that kept his head warm and that was enough. When he was younger he used to carry a little dog in his pocket. He claimed not to like dogs, but he carried it anyway, as a favour to the dog owner. He told me its name, but I couldn’t remember. At least he never had Alzheimer’s. But the dog had long gone and all the family and kit and caboodle attached to it. In his seventies he had fallen out with his older sister, who had lived with him, and moved into sheltered housing.

He was given a bed and a settee and a telly to keep him company, because he liked the old movies. He couldn’t see them, but would never let on. His favourite, of course, was ‘Song of Bernadette’. He’d an old fridge filled to the gunnels with E-Coli, a microwave that had been beat up, flung about and had rusted onto his worktop, but still worked. Somebody put in a phone, but he didn’t want it, so there was no point in it eating money, especially, as he said, the warden buzzed him every morning to see if he was still alive. His bathroom was a causality station, with eyes to the front, and nose to his behind, as his legs didn’t work as well as they used to and his stomach was a bit dicky. He should have had a home help and he did, but it never worked out. He didn’t want one. Didn’t trust them. Thought they were stealing off him. That was a common theme; anybody that spent any time with him, was stealing off him.

The irony was that he used to carry a stack of mail about with him in his pockets and ask the lassie in the post office to read it for him; the lassie that served him milk; the guy that was sitting next to him in the pew at mass, and that was how he ended up in hospital. Somebody told him that the shares that he had were being sold, so he jumped on a bus and went up to Parkhead, one of the places he had stock, and asked to speak to somebody in the office. He took a heart attack while he was waiting. Even in Gartnavel Hospital, were he was first taken, he was convinced that the parish priest and an attorney that he had appointed as joint signatories of his fortune were diddling him. He told me, in strictest confidence, that the priest was driving the lawyer’s car. Well, I don’t know who has got the worse reputation, lawyers or priests, so I asked the priest, since I didn’t know who his lawyer was, but I knew my Uncle had been trying to take away their ability to manage his fortune, which didn’t surprise me. He always protected his money.

That was the one thing you couldn’t ask him about. Even when he was dying he would no more tell you how much he had than why he never married or why he never had what my dad called lady friends, or if he used boot polish to blacken his hair. It just wasn’t done. And anyway he always thought himself a bit of a ducker and diver that was out to fool the State, or anybody else that was after his money. He didn’t include me in that category because I never asked, but if I had asked I’d have been slotted in there pretty quickly. He didn’t trust anybody. Not his home help. Not his visitors. Not really. The parish priest that left our parish warned the incoming priest, who took over from him, that he too would be accused of stealing Uncle John’s money.

I’ve always been in favour of Viking funerals. Pile everything that a person owns into the boat and push it out into the shipping lane. Set it on fire.

So what happens? Lets call this guy John Harkins, because that is his name. He’s an older guy, over 60, and has known my Uncle John a long time. My Uncle John tries to make him guardian. But John Harkins thinks it would be better if I did it. I’m in my van yesterday and he’s in his car and we stop in the street and have a chat. He’s been going up to see my Uncle John four or five times a week since he was in hospital, before Christmas, and latterly in the hospice. He tells me somebody has been up to see him. He describes her and I tell him who it is. She asks John Harkins; ‘And who exactly are you?’

John Harkins explains to her that he is just a friend, that him and me. had gone into Uncle John’s Sheltered house and got the suit that he wanted to be buried in and taken it to the hospice for him. He also said that he told her that we’d took some money, that his nephew had counted it out in front of him and the warden and he’d taken it down to the hospice and made a donation of the sum. John said he didn’t tell her how much it was, because she was like ‘a big fucking black crow’. But he also said that she’d told him I wasn’t his nephew. John knew this. I’d told him, the matron, and the nursing staff that we weren’t blood relatives. I was his Godson.

I’d known him all my life. He was my dad’s best pal. He used to have an old green Ford Cortina and he took our whole family, five children and two adults on our only ever holiday to Wemyss Bay in it, to the caravan. And my memory might be playing tricks on me, but I’m sure he also fitted in our cousin’s family in that car; my mother’s sister. And there were six of them and two adults. I think he had a beer mat for a tax disc and insurance was for mugs, but he remembered that car very well. When I asked him about it he told me he sold it. He would always wait a minute and nod and tell me that he sold it for a profit, because it was a great wee car. So, as his niece said, I wasn’t a blood relative.

‘How did nobody tell me he was ill?’ she asked poor John Harkins.

We both laughed at that. He’d been in sheltered housing for five or six years and she’d never visited. He’d been in hospital for six months.

‘And you know what?’ said the big black beetle, ‘he’s got a lot more than that lying about.’