Bobby’s Room by Douglas Dunn. Part 1.
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Go to Part 2
Bobby’s Room by Douglas Dunn
Henry Pollock was the only child of only children, and his four grandparents were dead. When he was twelve, in 1954, he and his parents left Glasgow on a motoring holiday. They stayed in a succession of hotels all over the Borders and the southwest of Scotland. At one place, they found that the hotels and guesthouses were full. It was a town Mrs Pollock particularly wanted to visit, and all the rooms were booked up for some local annual event. Mr Pollock was irate.
His wife chided him for not having telephoned a reservation in advance, as, she said, she had suggested in the first place.
‘We said potluck was part of the charm, did we not?’ was Henry’s father’s riposte. Bickering in the car park lasted almost an hour.
Pollock was a tall man, powerful, proud, and successful; Henry had got used to his obstinate refusals to give in to his wife’s complaints or preferences, to which, in the end, he always conformed without seeming to surrender. Harsh words when they fell out were, Henry knew, a prelude to that kind of morning on which he didn’t see them until it was nearly noon. If these were mornings when he went to school, then his mother hurriedly threw his breakfast together and kissed him on the ear before running back upstairs in her kimono.
Even in the small space of the car, they managed to ignore Henry, and he knew better than to say anything.
‘If you’re in such a hurry to find somewhere, then why don’t you drive?’ his father asked Mrs Pollock.
‘You know I can’t. Don’t be so stupid.’
‘Then allow me to the judge of when we leave and when we don’t. I need petrol, in any case.’
‘You can’t possibly need petrol. You filled up this morning in Dumfries.’
Eventually they got under way again, and after a few miles Pollock stopped the car outside a substantial stone-built villa, a house much like their own back in Glasgow; a notice board advertised that it offered accommodations.
‘What do you think?’ he asked
‘I think it’s seen better days, that’s what I think, said Mrs Pollock, who was still simmering. Her husband went to see if there were two rooms available, and to investigate what the place was like. ‘It doesn’t even have a drive, she said to Henry. ‘Where will we put the car?’
‘I don’t see any cars, Henry said, ‘so they must have rooms’
‘When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Netherbank, she said, sounding the name of the house as proof of its unsuitability.
Pollock returned a few minutes later. ‘It’s first-rate,’ he said with genuine enthusiasm, leaning into the car. ‘The rooms are large and spotlessly clean, very airy and spacious, and no one else is staying there’ Breezily, he listed the qualifications Mrs Pollock always insisted were necessary for a night’s comfort.
‘We can have the sitting room to ourselves, if we want it, and you’ll find the bathroom highly acceptable. I think we should take it, Irene, it’s run by a lovely old couple. You’ll adore them.’
Netherbank was run by a Mrs Bawden. She was over sixty, silver-haired, round, short, respectable, and as Mrs Pollock said afterwards, very nicely spoken. She took it in her stride when Mrs Pollock asked if she could have a look at what she was offering for dinner. ‘Normally, I prefer a proper restaurant. But my husband’s very tired after a day’s driving.’
‘Some people ask me for what they call an “evening meal”, Mrs Bawden said, lifting the lid off a saucepan. ‘I call it dinner. I’ve always called it dinner, and I won’t change now. Round about here, people call lunch dinner. But I call it luncheon, and I call it luncheon at twelve-thirty. And I call tea tea. I don’t know where we’ll all end up if we begin to call things by the wrong names!’ Mrs Pollock couldn’t agree more.
They stayed for five nights. Henry knew one of the reasons his parents liked the place so much: Mrs Bawden was very obliging. Before Mrs Pollock could ask, Mrs Bawden offered to keep an eye on Henry if they wanted to go off by themselves for a day, or go to dinner in a hotel restaurant about ten miles away which Mrs Bawden had heard was outstanding for its seafood. ‘But Mrs Bawden, you’ll do yourself out of business,’ his mother said.
‘No, no, I won’t. You’re on holiday, and it’ll be my pleasure to help you enjoy yourselves.’ Mrs Pollock revelled in being the beneficiary of that sort of consid-eration. Henry’s parents had three days on their own without him, and three evenings at the famous restaurant.
Henry wandered round the hills and farms, and walked the two miles to the sea. He read, and he watched Mr Bawden at work in his garden. The old man was hard of hearing, or said he was, and when Henry tried to talk to him he pointed to an ear, smiled, and went back to his weeding or hoeing.
These were the last days of their holiday. His parents loved it. ‘I haven’t felt so refreshed and well in years!’ said Henry’s mother as they drove home. ‘And Mrs Bawden – what a wonderful woman! Her cooking’s pre-war! We were lucky to find it. It’s the sort of place you could drive right past without giving it so much as a moment’s notice!’
After that, she and her husband looked at each other in the way that made Henry feel he wasn’t there. A little later, Mrs Pollock started to sing. She coaxed Henry to join in. When he didn’t, she turned round and said, ‘You’ll grow up to be miserable. Why won’t you sing, like the rest of us?’
Go to Part 2