I often wonder about the thoughts and dreams that went through Mum’s head when she looked out from her tenement window at the hulking vessels being built on the Clydeside shipyards. She’d told me about the times her mum would take her by the hand to see them being launched, and how they would both cry as they slid into the water before heading off out to sea. Was it the beauty of the spectacle that brought them to tears, or the fact that they had watched them grow up, and now they were leaving and they would never see them again?
The interiors of many of those ships would be much more comfortable than the conditions Mum and her family lived in during the 1940s and ‘50s. At least they only had to share a toilet with several other families, it wasn’t out in the back yard like my dad’s had been. If anything, Dad had it tougher than Mum, what with six brothers and sisters and a father who built those ships and was as hard – and in some ways as weak – as his environment dictated. Friday nights were not the best in that particularly crowded flat.
Who knows how we develop our tastes, but something took root in Mum’s mind and grew to a desire that surprised me when she announced one day, having seen an article on the TV news, that for years she had nurtured a desire to see a ballet. Why had it taken her so long to admit to that? I suspect that she had, but only to Dad, because he commented that there was no way he was ever going to a ballet. It was not something that the son of a riveter indulged in.
I remember the Christmas morning, when I was in my late teens, that I handed my mum an envelope and noted the look of disappointment on her face. I knew what she was thinking, that I couldn’t come up with any good ideas and had bought her a gift voucher. Even though I knew she was mistaken, I was still worried that her expression wouldn’t change that much; after all, it wasn’t something she could wear or eat or show off to her workmates in the old people’s home where she worked nightshifts so that she would be around for her family during the day. Constantly tired, I should add, but that was my mum for you.
My anticipation was part pleasure, part dread, but the look of surprise followed by the way she turned to Gran, with a look on her face I had never seen before, and said, ‘It’s two tickets for Swan Lake,’ assured me I had gambled correctly. The problem now was to convince my dad to go with her, something he stubbornly refused to do. What were we to do? She might be able to convince one of her friends to go along, but had any of them any real interest in seeing a bunch of men and women in tights and tutus? She asked me if I would go with her and I agreed. I just had to make sure my pals didn’t find out.
It wasn’t just any old production of the classic, popular ballet, it was being performed by Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet company, featuring dancers of the highest order.
My dad dropped us in town, just outside Glasgow’s Theatre Royal, then went off to play snooker with some friends. Mum was thrilled at her first visit to this venue and if I worried that she might feel out of place among the plush décor and posh audience then I needn’t have worried. It was as though this woman who, as a little girl had played barefoot on the streets of Govan, belonged here simply because she decided that she did.
She bought herself a glass of wine in the theatre bar and I had a glass of orange and lemonade.
When the bell rang to inform us that the show would be starting shortly we made our way to our seats, and I was so glad that I had splashed out on the most expensive ones, near to the front, in the middle of the row.
I experienced an ironic chill when Tchaikovsky’s music began to play. I remembered that the Swan Lake theme was used as the title music of the old black and white Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi that I’d first seen when I was ten years old. Dad used to let my brothers and me sit up late to watch the Don’t Watch Alone series of horror films that used to be shown on telly on a Friday night.
It was as much as I could not to check on Mum during the performance. I could sense how much she was loving what she was watching, and perhaps that is partly why I loved it so much too, and why I still go the ballet now, one of my great pleasures being to go there with my wife and daughters. Whatever that seed was that took root in Mum and made her appreciate the combination of discipline and beauty, I became infected with it too – and my old pals can know about it as much as they like now. But the story doesn’t end there. Years later, old and finding it difficult to walk far without getting breathless, Dad made a confession to me:
‘You know, son,’ he said, ‘I wish I’d gone with your mother to see Swan Lake that time.’ Flicking through the TV channels he’d recognised the music of The Nutcracker on an arts channel and an hour-and-a-half later realised that he really liked what he’d just seen. ‘It’s the precision and the grace of the ballet dancers,’ he said.
And so it was that one night he opened a bottle of Merlot and sat with Mum on the settee to watch Swan Lake.