Mortimer and I met when we were five, but we were not aware of it. We had both started in our local primary school in Maryhill, but he was in the other class, so we were never introduced. That we met is, however, beyond question. For a year and a half we shared the playground of the ‘infant school’ – the children who were aged five to seven. We would have come within each other’s vision almost daily, perhaps knocking each other over in the playground melee.
It was more than a decade later, when we were sixteen, that we met again. Through a series of coincidences I ended up walking into his church, where his father was Minister – a ramshackle wooden hut in a poor district of Glasgow. The place was packed with young people around our age, but Mortimer and I seemed drawn together as by a magnet. We almost instantly became best friends.
Soon the memories came flooding back to confirm that this was merely a reunion from olden days. Because of his name, we could not forget the visit to the school from Mr Flood, the fireman. More particularly, we remembered his daughter who was also in our school, since even at age five we agreed she was rather good looking.
The instant attraction between Mortimer and me was strange, since we were like chalk and cheese. For both of us our Maryhill days were far behind us. Mortimer had moved with his family to Kirn at age six. For my part, from a starting point in a single end and then a ‘but ’n’ ben’ we had moved to the plusher surrounds of Mount Florida. However, if ‘you can take the boy out of Maryhill but you can’t take Maryhill out of the boy’, that comprehensively applied to me and just as comprehensively did not apply to Mortimer. I essentially remained the ‘tyke’ as I had grown up; Mortimer, on the other hand, had decided to seek after what he saw as the finer things in life. He thought an Oxbridge accent was the best so he acquired it to perfection. When we went out for a meal, if it was his turn to choose the restaurant, it was a mortgage job. We joked that we were like the key characters in The Persuaders at the time – he was Roger Moore as Lord Brett Sinclair and I was Tony Curtis as Danny Wilde. It was pin-striped suit versus denim jacket, Michelin star versus pub grub, Oxbridge versus ‘the Glesca’.
One day Mortimer told me he was going into politics. He was seeking the Conservative Party nomination for his Glasgow constituency – an area where the chance of a Tory not losing his deposit was equivalent to the prospects of a snowball in the hotter regions. I immediately said I would be his election agent. It would have made no difference if it had been the Communist Party of Great Britain or the Monster Raving Loonies. This was Mortimer, and I would stand shoulder to shoulder with him all the way. But he didn’t get the nomination. They said he was ‘too conservative’.
Our escapades together became family legends. One day we went on a Cairngorm winter climb in the midst of a blizzard. Mortimer had the latest and finest mountaineering gear. I, as usual, had the anorak my mother bought me, oversized, when I was thirteen, my ancient workmen’s boots and my World War II rucsac. We reached the ice-covered Cairngorm Radio Station after many weary hours. We had travelled this route often and planned to shelter there for the night. However, we found it locked, for the age of the mountain vandals had arrived. We pitched my tent in the full force of the blizzard. No ground sheet, leaking like a sieve and one broken pole. In the morning it was a whiteout. We tried to get back down to civilisation, but in our exhaustion we misread the compass. Hours later we sat down in the snow, sensing danger. We prayed. Never have prayers been more earnest. For one moment the mist cleared, and we saw that we were perched on the rocks eight hundred feet above Loch Avon. We reversed course and at last found safety.
The friendship that started at age sixteen lasted unbroken for a full fifty years. We only ever once fell out. It was philosophical. We were out walking on holiday in France and we had a bitter argument over whether there was a difference between ‘is-ness’ and ‘being’. I can’t remember which side I was on. All I know is that I was right.
But, alas! Mortimer had become dangerously ill with a rare genetic condition. He was told he could not travel. So, characteristically he announced to me that they were off to his favourite place, Positano on the Amalfi Coast. Just before going he phoned me. ‘I have acquired some Beluga caviar and I hope to get some gulls’ eggs – we’ll have them on my return.’ He also announced his plans for a banquet. My wife was to make a couple of the desserts. She immediately thought of her pavlova and her lemon cheesecake. But no. She would be told what to do. This was to be a thirty-five course tasting banquet by Heston Blumenthal.
But I never saw Mortimer again. He did come home from Positano. In an air ambulance. He would be glad to know how much I miss him. But being Mortimer, he would have been even gladder to know how much I missed the caviar, the gulls’ eggs and the banquet.