Whisky

A flat in the west end of Glasgow. Posh in the way that only certain Glasgow flats can be, not showy, just genuinely, solidly grand. A cosy kitchen with a worn wooden table that had absorbed decades of conversation. And a living room that stopped you in the doorway every time with its impossibly high ceilings, a grand piano, furniture so comfortable it felt like it had been waiting for you specifically, and a fireplace so large and so present that it seemed to radiate warmth even when no fire was burning.

In this flat lived the most wonderful couple.

My aunt and uncle by marriage. He had been a Royal Navy diver during the Second World War (the kind of diver who went down to remove mines, which is the sort of detail that takes a moment to fully land). After the war, he became a teacher. She had been many things across her career, each one interesting: a stewardess on BEA (she did not care for the term flight attendant) who once waited on Churchill during a flight, before moving on to being a tour guide, special education teacher, and eventually teaching English. She also had a PhD. in French literature.

The first evening we ever spent together, a million years ago, it was established that we would always begin with a glass of champagne, and then move to whisky for the rest of the night. And so it was, every time, without fail.

My uncle was a true Scotsman who took his whisky with the seriousness it deserved. He knew every distillery. He had perhaps a hundred bottles distributed throughout the flat the way other people leave stacks of books, on shelves, on side tables, in corners, wherever there was a surface willing to hold one. If you wanted to know about whisky he was your man.

Those evenings around the kitchen table, or sunk deep into those sofas with feet tucked underneath me, he would open a bottle and tell us about it. Where it came from, how it was made, what made it different from the last one. And then the stories would begin. Their stories, decades of them, spilling out over the whisky. Travels and friendships and adventures and the kind of anecdotes that make you understand, what a life fully lived actually looks like. We would laugh until it was late, and dance when the mood took us (they loved dancing. Oh! the way he would twirl her…) , and eventually drift off to bed with our heads and our hearts full and that particular feeling of being somewhere safe.

That flat was also where I spent two of the hardest weeks of my life.

They sat with me through it. At that kitchen table, in that drawing room, there was always a glass of whisky. There was always a hug.

He died at ninety-four.

She is ninety now, and in a care home, and still has her one glass of champagne every evening before supper. She no longer drinks whisky, but makes sure there is a bottle waiting for us when we visit.

When I think of whisky, I think of them. 

Sláinte.