Are you up there, Mrs. Haston? (standard:humor, 1515 words)
Author: scarlettorocker	Added: Mar 19 2004	Views/Reads: 3342/2130	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
In honour of my Granny, Pip.

My granny, Pip, was a dear old soul, who'd led an eventful if naive
life, and when she met Harry Haston, I wonder if the term opposites 
attract cropped up. She was one of four children - three girls, one boy 
- whose parents hailed from the Celtic Fringe. As a man of his time, 
Pip's father forbade his daughters to work, and she often said that 
despite personal heartache, the war years were her freedom years. She 
spent time in the Women's Royal Air Force and the Land Army, where she 
chased boys and drove a tractor. Her boyfriend Ken was killed in the 
war and as she watched the dogfights of the Battle of Britain, Pip 
wondered if the men inside the planes fighting were only boys like him. 
Grandad was a very handsome man, whose traditional good looks were a 
contrast to Pip's sharp beauty. They were, indeed, a good looking 
couple who had two good looking daughters. The whole family thought 
that Pip was in a class of her own, and my mother said that she spent 
most of her childhood cringing at Pip's wacky behaviour. And so 
Granny's only option was to operate within a world of her own. She was 
optimistic as well as eccentric. Pip rarely gave up, especially if 
something wasn't working, and was rarely unhappy. One day, Granny came 
to meet me from school. She was wearing the smirk that she always wore 
when she'd done something awful, and she did something awful pretty 
often. This time was to be no exception. “Oo-er Emerald, we're locked 
out of the house,” she smiled. “We've got to climb through a window.” 
Grandad worked in Edinburgh, and would not be home for a while yet. By 
the time we'd walked through the Lodge and the past the putting greens, 
the Scottish evening was rolling in. The light house on the Bass Rock 
had begun to wink as we stood and wondered how we were going to get in 
to the relative warmth of our draughty, seaside house. It was a 
three-storey affair on the end of a terrace, which faced the Firth of 
Forth. The ground floor was somebody's holiday home, and the top two 
floors were ours, entered into by stairs leading up from a little back 
garden. Beyond the garden wall lay a field, where Tantallon Terrace's 
children would play, and past that were the woods. We were immediately 
at a disadvantage. There were no windows which were accessible, for 
climbing through a ground floor one would only take Granny into the 
downstairs flat. Our door had been snecked shut with the keys safely on 
the kitchen table. “Emerald,” she said to me, “I'm going to have to 
climb onto the roof.” And so employing the skills that she'd learnt in 
the Land Army, Granny found a few footholds and pulled herself onto a 
flat piece of roof. She inched herself up further still, until she 
could reach the sitting room window. At last, I thought, hoping that 
we'd be in there in time for the Clangers. But Granny reached up to 
find the window locked. By now the sky had deepened a shade, and I knew 
that sitting in front of the fire with a plate of spaghetti hoops on 
toast was but a fantasy. Still, at least it was light enough for Granny 
to jump back down safely so that we could come up with something else. 
It was not to be. “Emerald,” she called, “I can't get down any further. 
I'm stuck!” Her tone of voice was anything but distressed. If anything 
there was a hint of enjoyment that she was going to cause trouble. But 
time was getting on and if Granny was enjoying her rebellious streak, I 
wasn't. Never mind I thought, for there was a skylight in the kitchen 
of the holiday flat. And if the lady who was renting it was in, at 
least Granny could follow her trail back to dry land. The lady who 
lived n the flat was someone I knew well, for she was my class teacher. 
Mrs. McNab was a young woman of around twenty-four, who had been given 
the care of Primary 3b. When she and her husband moved into the flat I 
was pleased, for now I would have a companion for the walk home. The 
best thing about Mrs. McNab's class was writing up our diaries, which 
we would also illustrate with our lives' events, or even make up our 
own stories. As I walked around to the front of the house, she was just 
coming back from work. All was dark now, and I could see the lights 
across the Firth of Forth in Fife. The Bass Rock was a black 
silhouette, and it was small wonder that my teacher was surprised to 
see me sitting on her garden wall. “Hello Emerald, it's a bit chilly 
for you to still be out,” she remarked. I shook my head. “I can't get 
into my house, Mrs. McNab. We're locked out and my granny's stuck on 
the roof,” I explained “Can you help us?” “Are you pulling my leg, 
Emerald Dunne?” she asked, quite reasonably. “No,” I insisted. “Come 
round the back of the house and you'll see for yourself.” Mrs. McNab 
followed me to the back of the house. But couldn't see a thing. The 
back of the house was even darker than the seafront, for there were no 
street lights. “Are you up there, Mrs. Haston?” she asked hesitantly. 
“YES!” came a shrill reply. Mrs. McNab gasped. “Do you mind if I climb 
through your window?” asked Granny. Mrs. McNab and I went straight into 
her flat. She stood on a chair and opened the kitchen skylight, 
apologising to Granny for the chair not being a ladder. Alas, the 


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