by Henry Bell

The borders
lie deep in maroon, cimarron Jamaica,
Freetown,
and Jericho.
Men made from tar ten thousand years ago
who walked for generations north
go home and pillage, rob
and leave a hundred pipe bands in return.
Bodies that trudged from Africa to Orkney
return white and cold and thieving.
They leave Nubians their tartan trews
and whisky
and take bodies, gold and food
and law.
The Scottish Borders stretch
across the central belt and up
through Aberdeen, a great gulf
filled with wealth and pride and torn black skin
hiding words like merchant, sugar
Lord, tobacco, lookout.

by Diana Hendry

One year, dressed in his suit, father marched me
across the road to the sandhills. All week
they’d been building a bonfire there. We kept
our distance. From his pocket father produced
a few meagre sparklers. Lit them nervously.
Allowed me to hold one. The next year he bought
a packet of fireworks from the newsagent’s. It
contained one of each kind. Manfully he pinned
the catherine wheel on the coal house door,
commanded mother and me to stand back.
We watched its desultory whizz. The rocket
on its zooming stick was deemed too dangerous
to light. Maybe we failed to make the right oohs
and ahs. The next year he ignored the whole thing.

Perhaps those years fire-watching made him timid.
I used to think he roved the roofs at night
or leant against a chimney like Sinatra singing
something lonely for the road. More likely
he was watching from the bedroom window
and saw across the Mersey distant fires,
whole streets in flames and folk he couldn’t save.
Years after and I’m still trying to romance him.
Who wouldn’t want a father who was brave ?
Post-war you’d see him looking business savvy,
smoothing down his ‘tash, a slick of Brylcreem
in his hair, playing safe his most essential trade.

by Diana Hendry

Sometimes I still use it,
scrubbing the flattened puff
into the hardened stuff
then rubbing it on my cheeks
as she did on hers.

It was her bravado, her little dash
of chic in its navy and gold pot,
Rouge Rosette Brune on the lid.
Before my father came home
from work she’d nip upstairs

for a quick blush of pink. Despite
our protests she’d add a dab
before the doctor’s visit for fear
he’d see her pale and poorly.
I think it might last forever.

Whenever I use it I feel
like a child again, drawn
to her dressing table, trying on
her pearls, her lipstick, her rouge
like her finger’s touch on my face.

The Scottish Cemetery, Kolkata

by Chrys Salt

At first none of us would go there.
The kids were frightened of the snakes,
the tortured idols of their God.
My little boy Mohammed said he’d seen a ghost,
horned like a demon in a tree.
But when they’d cleared the jungle
dug up roots and thorns,
mended their graves
and set the stones upright,
it was like a garden in a picture book.
They planted shrubs and flowers,
it smelled of mint and herbs,
whole families buried there in temples
fit for kings. Carvings of iron faced men,
pillars and crosses everywhere,
statues with wings, and in the summer,
birds and butterflies.
One landed on Mohammed’s hand
and opened like a miracle.

We swelter in our bamboo hut
with scarcely room to swing a rat.
No shelter when it rains.
We dry our clothes and cook along the track.
Our kids play football on live rails
and dodge the trains.
So it is somewhere we can get away from that,
lower our veils when there’s no man to see.
Chat over chai and biscuits while our kids run free,
learn to dance, draw, wash their hands,
write poetry, befriend the Christian ghosts
of Scots who made their homes in India,
breathe sunlight from this greening lung of history.

note
The Scottish Cemetery was founded as a burial ground for Presbyterians and other non Anglican denominations of Scots arriving in Calcutta in the early nineteenth century. It had fallen into disrepair but now the Scottish Cemetery Project is clearing and restoring the site and providing programmes of activities for Muslim women and children from the neighbourhood to make a tangible improvement to their lives.