The Road to Glenbogle Chapter 2, a monarch of the glen fanfic

Part II

The Road to the Present

I had a pleasant, if unusual childhood, surrounded by a large, if unconventional family. At first it was just Mama, Aunt Elizabeth, and me, living in the penthouse suite above Chez Refuge, with anywhere up to 8 girls living in the bedrooms and shared spaces below. Aunt Elizabeth, the wealthy, philanthropic widow of a French automobile manufacturer, had a few years earlier founded Chez Refuge as a shelter for prostitutes who wanted a respite from or way off of the streets of Paris.

I was in part raised by Aunt Elizabeth and the succession of girls who came and went from the place, as Mama had a demanding career as an actress in France's longest running soap opera, Les Bon, Les Mauvais, et les Chic. Mama was the striking, blonde, actress, known as Monalise Gilbert, who played the Englishwoman Terri Swopes. In the early years, Terri was a trés mauvais: beautiful and heartless, a home wrecker and a heart breaker. She was a character whom French audiences loved to hate.

At home, Mama was trés bonne. Hadn't she left her home in England shortly before I was born to help Aunt Elizabeth run her charity? Hadn't she found a sister and a brother for me to play with during the long days while she was gone? And didn't she have a lap wide enough for all three of us by placing pillows next to her on the bed or sofa and letting us all pile on?

My siblings were brought to us by two of the girls. I don't remember the Senegalese woman who lived downstairs during her pregnancy, leaving behind her 2 month old daughter when she returned to the streets. I do remember Mama sitting with me in her lap and baby Lisette in mine, as we fed her a bottle.

I have a dim memory of Mishal, the young Algerian teenager had run away from home rather than face her family's wrath when she became pregnant. Aunt Elizabeth had rescued her and when she found her begging on the streets, and she sometimes played with Lisette and me. She delivered to us a baby boy. Mama named him Archaimbaud, but we called him Arché (Arshay). After his birth, Aunt Elizabeth arranged for Mishal to live with a modern Muslim family who would let her live out her childhood and finish her education without the black mark of premature motherhood hanging over her head like a scimitar.

When we were young, Mama never used the word adopted when speaking of how Lisette and Arché came to us, but she did refer fondly and matter-of-factly about the mothers who grew them. I may have been 5 when I first wondered out loud about the mother who grew me. "I grew you," Mama informed me with her tinkling laugh. I wasn't sure whether to feel privileged or cheated for not having a special growing mother like my siblings.

As our family and the demands on the Chez Refuge grew, Aunt Elizabeth took over an adjacent building, built another penthouse suite for herself, and used the remaining floors for offices and day programs. There was a connecting door between the two quarters, always open, so we could run back and forth between the two.

I was known in the family as Jamie, pronounced Zhemi, by the French speakers. Aunt Elizabeth and the girls always spoke French to us. Mama always spoke English. Consequently we grew up fluent in both languages. When I started the day school that all of us were to attend, I soon learned I needed a French name, so I became Jacques away from home.

It was also at school that I learned that I learned about the importance of fathers. None of us at home had one, so mine was not missed. It was my classmate, Henri, who informed me that there was a male part to the family equation, and if I didn't know that I was an imbécile and a batârd. I gave him a shove which sent him running, and I never heard anything more about it. When I asked Mama she said that my father was British gentleman whom she knew in London.

That was enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while. Next I wanted to know if the British gentleman was Lisette and Arché's father too. No, I was told, their fathers were French. In time I came to understand that their paternity had been deduced from Lisette's café au lait skin and wavy black hair, and from Arché's wheat colored baby curls that turned darker each year, until now his hair is darker than mine. When my sibs entered school and classmates occasionally taunted them for not being French, all they had to do was come to me for protection and correction.

"They are as French as you and me," I would shout, my fists balled and ready for action. We were, in fact, all French citizens. "Do you want to come here and tell me I'm not French?" Of course they didn't and I wouldn't have done more than chase them if they had. I would never stoop to fighting with little kids, unless we were home and it was Lisette or Arché who had done something to deserve it.

School came easily to me. I learned to read French and English with equal facility and would probably have had my head in two books at a time if it weren't for Lisette and Arché dragging me out to play. Without them, I would undoubtedly have become even more of a precocious smart aleck than I was. We played tag, and hide and seek, board games, and pirates.

Sometimes we'd even play our fatherless version of house, with Lisette as mother, Arché as baby, and me as cook/security guard (like our faithful Jean-Claude). After Lisette tired of tending the baby, she would preen herself and leave for her acting job. I would fend off unwanted boyfriends and pimps while Arché would peek out, giggling, from behind the sofa. Lisette might be off singing and dancing in a world of her own, or with me on the carpet, which marked the bounds of our home, to yell at our invisible intruders in rude French.

Mama saw that we rode our bicycles in the park and had swimming lessons. While Lisette studied dance, Arché and I played football. Of course it wasn't Mama who usually took us to all these activities, but the buxom Brigitte, or the sad eyed Marie-Rose, or the efficient Claudette who took computer classes and would become Chez Refuge's most successful graduate. Later she would come back to work as Aunt Elizabeth's assistant.

On most weekends and the summers we would have Mama to ourselves. When she wasn't taking us to museums and other cultural attractions, she would let us play on the beach or in the park while she painted or sketched. She would take us to the country or to the Riviera or the Greek islands or the Alps, but never to Britain. I knew she had family there, but her father died before I was born. Her mother visited us yearly until her death four years later, but I don't remember her much. It never occurred to me that there might be others on the island nation, whom we were avoiding or who might be avoiding us.

I did come to wonder more about my father. After a while, I understood why the identities of Lisette and Arché's fathers were so vague. But what about my own? Had mama been walking the streets of London at night and come to Paris when she became pregnant with me? I was ashamed to even think such a thought. Never-the-less I blurted out one day when I was 11. "Did you know my father?"

"Of course I knew your father," Mama said looking puzzled, perhaps at the odd wording of my question. "I knew your father very well. He was a good man," she said, her face softening with the remembrance. "We loved each other, but it didn't work out. We were too different. " Then she quickly changed the subject.

I was relieved, but not fully satisfied. Why hadn't it work out? How were they different? Were they from warring families, like Romeo and Juliet? Was he a gentleman robber, like Raffles, who could only lead to trouble? Maybe he was a Soviet spy?

"What's his name?," I popped the question, some years later. It was one of my rare family appearances as she humorously referred to my teenage preference to be with my friends. "This isn't a good time to discuss it," she said slowly. "When you are a man, I'll tell you everything." That confirmed it. He was a Soviet spy.

Mama never had any shortage of men friends while we were growing up, although she never seemed to be overly attached to any one. I had no reason to think any of them were lovers or that they weren't. There was Émile, a businessman, who would come for dinner or drinks, ruffle our heads, show us silly magic tricks, and stay after we were put to bed. There was Yves, a fashion photographer, who took her to the theater and clubs, and there was Dominique, a writer, who took the most interest in me because I liked to write. I would show him my childish stories about boys who had great adventures, and later my essay on growing up at Chez Refuge. This he arranged to have published in Le Monde, after helping me with corrections. Thus I began my career as a writer.

Lisette and Arché both had their career choices nurtured at home, as well. When Lisette was 12, Mama's show decided that her character was due for a reformation. After suffering the heartbreak of a stillbirth, Terri was to adopt a homeless orphan girl she would find rummaging through her rubbish bin. Lisette, who when she wasn't entertaining us with her theatrics, was often engaged in histrionics, was offered a chance to try out for the part. She was a natural in front of the cameras and played Désirée for the next six years.
When she finished secondary school, Lisette went straight to Hollywood, where she now does modeling and commercials and has had some small parts in film and television. You may have seen her picture in People magazine in an article about Madonna and her Jewish mysticism crowd.

Arché followed Jean-Claude around the kitchen so much that he soon became a competent cook himself. Mama dubbed him a food artiste. He went to culinary school, became a top chef in Paris, and now runs his own restaurant in New York with his girlfriend, Katrine. If you are ever in the City, as the locals call it, you must go to Poisson Volant but be sure to make reservations well in advance.

I was the only one to go to University. Mama wanted me to attend the Sorbonne, but I decided to go to Cambridge instead, where I studied Arabic and Russian. I was already planning to become a travel writer. I naively decided I already knew how to write; I just needed some help in getting around.

I'm not saying I didn't have to study hard, but languages have always come easily to me, and I also had time for athletics. I was star of the swim team, captain of the rowing team, and a member of the football team.

Cambridge is an international community, and I could have remained Jacques or reverted to Jamie. Instead I chose to be known as Jock. I wanted to have a British identity, but Jamie was reserved for family.

When it came time to graduate, I wasn't certain whether Mama would attend. As far as I knew, she had never returned to England since she left pregnant with me except for her mother's funeral. She did come, accompanied by her friend André, an artist and gallery owner I had never met before. Mum linked arms with him in an intimate way when they walked. He
I returned home a week later, ready to start my career as a man of the world. I had some job leads to follow up and other things to attend, to as well.

"So, Mama," I said our first morning together at breakfast. "Am I a man now?"

"Of course you are" she laughed as she caressed my scratchy unshaven face. "Do you really need to ask?"

"Just checking," I said. "So now you can tell me about the British gentleman, my papa."

"Oh," she said turning pale. Her hand was shaking as she lowered her fork. "What do you want to know?"

"His name might be a good start."

She looked at her plate and then back at me. "You have a right to know," she said slowly. "I would have told you earlier, but the situation is rather more complex than any boy should have to deal with. I'm ashamed to say, I don't know for certain who he was."

I swallowed hard. "You told me he was a British gentleman. Now are you telling me that was a lie?"

"Not exactly a lie. There was a British gentleman whom I did truly love. It may have been he. I like to think it was, but it could have been a few others."

"What few others?" I asked, my voice rising in pitch.

"They were all friends of mine - people I met at parties, or at work. You have to understand. It was the 60s. I was young. I got caught up in the excesses of the time. When I learned I was pregnant, I didn't know what to do, so I decided to come here. You must realise, Jamie, that having you was one of the best things of my life."

I cleared my throat. "So there's really nothing you can tell me with any certainty about my father." I set my jaw firmly and stared at her."

"Oh, Jamie, please don't be cross with me. Maybe I should have tried to find out - demanded blood tests - for your sake. But frankly I didn't want to know. I didn't need financial support from them and I didn't want to complicate my life or theirs by bringing them into it. Was that selfish of me?"

"I don't know," I said. "But what's done is done. I've gotten along this far without a father. Lisette and Arché know that their fathers are French. Is it safe to say my father is British?"

"Oh, yes. Very safe."

"I went back to eating my breakfast and pondered my situation. I no longer had any taste for my omelette, but I sipped my coffee in silence. Mama picked at her food and moved it around her plate. "Oh, Jamie, you do understand don't you? I made some mistakes, but then I had you. I wouldn't have had it any other way. You know I love you."

"Yes, I love you too," I said without feeling. I gulped down the rest of my coffee and stood up to leave. "I have some work to do, Mother. I'll be in my room." I never called her Mother unless I was teasing or angry.

I didn't stay angry for long. How could I? I was happy to be here, after all. We didn't discuss the subject again for another 15 years. During that time I had toured extensively around the world and was beginning to make a name for myself as a writer. I'd be gone for months at a time, but I would always return home to Mama. I was 36 years old and the only one of my friends who didn't have a place of his own was a pleasant enough chap. They came to the ceremony, stayed long enough for hugs, handshakes, photographs, and a short tour of the campus. They left on an early train.

I returned home a week later, ready to start my career as a man of the world. I had some job leads to follow up and other things to attend, to as well.

"So, Mama," I said our first morning together at breakfast. "Am I a man now?"

"Of course you are" she laughed as she caressed my scratchy unshaven face. "Do you really need to ask?"

"Just checking," I said. "So now you can tell me about the British gentleman, my papa."

"Oh," she said turning pale. Her hand was shaking as she lowered her fork. "What do you want to know?"

"His name might be a good start."

I swallowed hard. "You told me he was a British gentleman. Now are you telling me that was a lie?"

"Not exactly a lie. There was a British gentleman whom I did truly love. It may have been he. I like to think it was, but it could have been a few others."

"What few others?" I asked, my voice rising in pitch.

I cleared my throat. "So there's really nothing you can tell me with any certainty about my father." I set my jaw firmly and stared at her."

"I don't know," I said. "But what's done is done. I've gotten along this far without a father. Lisette and Arché know that their fathers are French. Is it safe to say my father is British?"

"Oh, yes. Very safe."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. At University I had heard about some recent graduates who had turned their own travel experiences into a small, now growing enterprise: a series of travel guide books which they called Global Village. Their series was intended to appeal to a younger, hipper, audience than Fodor's and the rest. It would include more out of the way places and opportunities to experience the countries first hand. I contacted them and discovered I was just the sort of person they were looking for. Over the next two years, they sent me to Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Moscow and Egypt, where I would collect information and write for their guide books.

It was in Egypt that I decided to strike out on my own, and become a freelance writer. I was aiming more for National Geographic than Travel but I would take what I could get. By now I had enough money to finance my own travels, as I had received an inheritance from Aunt Elizabeth who had died a year earlier. Chez Refuge was being run by the ever efficient and compassionate Claudette.

My goal in traveling was to live and work with the ordinary people rather than see the sights. I had been offered a job with an Egyptian owned adventure boat trip down the Nile but couldn't take it until I received a work permit. So when I finished with Global Village, I moved from my hotel to a hostel in Cairo, and made some inquiries into volunteering at an archaeological site. Since it didn't look like either the volunteer work or the permit was happening anytime soon, my time was completely my own.

By day I wandered around the bazaars, and spent time in the kahwas (cafes), where I wrote in my journal, drank strong Egyptian coffee and played backgammon. By night I went to some of the local clubs where I smoked sheesha -the sweet, fragrant Arabian tobaccos inhaled through a hookah - and indulged in my taste for belly dancing

I had been fascinated with belly dancing since I first saw it as a boy of 16 on holiday with my family in Greece. Mama, as always, was eager to expose us to local culture, but I don't think she knew what she was getting us into when she chose this particular venue. As I like to recall, it was patronized mostly by middle aged and older men and their questionable female companions. We were the only family there. The dancers, who wore little more than the gauzy scarves with which they liked to play peek-a-boo, came on to the audience and withdrew in a blatantly sexual way.

Following the example of others, I reached into my wallet to tip one performer who was jiggling her bountiful self in front of us. Whether I really would have stuffed the note in her brassiere or just handed it to her with an sheepish smile, I'll never know, since I was stopped mid action by Mama patting my knee and hissing, "There are some things one does not do in front of one's mother."

The next time I saw belly dancing I was a first year student at Cambridge. A girl who had spent a term in Turkey came back to share the "secret female arts" with other women on campus. If she hadn't made such a big deal about "no boys allowed," I don't think any of us would have taken notice; but as it was, it became a big joke among my friends to fantasise about sneaking in to see the sights.

My friend David and I, emboldened by a little too much beer, and the offer of a bottle of Bordeaux, each, if we actually did it, agreed to accept the challenge. We entered the practice room a half hour before the girls were to arrive. It was a comfortable sitting room in one of the houses. We hid behind some heavy drapes in front of two conveniently placed window seats. We waited with boredom mixed with excitement as we tried to focus on the books we brought along to study. We may have been peeping Toms, but we were still serious students.

The girls eventually dawdled in, wearing leotards, tank tops and shorts, work-out pants and oversized t-shirts, nothing like the flimsy costumes of the Greek ladies. They took off their shoes and socks and lazily wiggled their toes and flexed their feet. Christine, the student-instructor rushed in apologising for being late and plunked down a tape deck. With a stentorian voice she commanded the others to stand up and begin warm ups. For 20 long minutes they diligently exercised each body part and muscle group. I found myself glancing at my text book from time to time. Memorizing Russian verbs was more exciting than this.

Warm ups were followed by practicing specific techniques to music while walking gracefully forward and back. First they did a shoulder shimmy, followed by stomach rolls, and pelvic rocks. Then they tried a combine of all the movements in fluid succession. This might have been a little more entertaining if the students weren't quite so clumsy and giggly over their mistakes. Only Christine could execute the movements with any authority, and Christine had too much of an attitude problem, in my opinion, to be of any real interest.

At the end of class, Christine announced it was time for free style, which I could see from their excitement, was a favorite of the girls. Christine put on a new tape which I remember as having an especially rousing, syncopated beat. It was a spirited, love song, with female ululation - a hard to describe, high pitched, wavering sound from the throat - and the repeated words: layla layla layla - night night night.

The girls faced each other in a circle and swayed and undulated and yipped and twirled, smiling at each other joyously. Now this is what I had come for. My heart skipped a beat as I admired the prettiest and most skillful dancers, and wondered what I desired more: to make love to them or be one of them. I was enchanted.

Free style was over all too soon. Christine turned off the tape and declared it was time for closing circle. There was hush in the room as the girls stepped closer and held hands. It was then that I realized what a terrible cramp I had developed from sitting cross legged for so long. I couldn't bear it any longer and slowly tried to free my legs. This was a mistake. In the silent room, I could be heard.

Instantly all eyes were turned toward me and Christine rushed over and pulled open the drapes. "You flippin' bug-turd," she growled, (or words to that effect.). David, from the other window seat, let out an involuntary guffaw. We were both yanked out from our hiding places, and pummeled with angry fists. We broke away and ran, but not before we were hit with a barrage of shoes. We kept on running, and so did our barefoot pursuers, ululating and yipping all the way.

We finally outran them and laughing and gasping, slipped into a campus pub. "Do you think they recognized us?" David asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Sydney is in my Lit class and Laurel is going with my room mate."

"We're dead," David said.

In fact we survived the experience. We invited the girls to share our wine and most of them came - even Christine. Now here I was in Egypt, having seen more belly dancers than I had movies in the past few months, but I hadn't tired of it yet. None of the dancing I had seen in Egyptian clubs were as overtly sexual as the show in Greece, but quite sensual and more professional than my Cambridge classmates. Now on my own, I found myself drawn to a particular club known as Asdiqa (Friends). It had a largely Egyptian clientele, the sheesha was good, and so was the beer, and most importantly, there was Bashira.

Bashira was my favourite belly dancer. Not as flashy or scanty a dresser as the dancers in the hotel clubs, she was as sultry as the best of them. She was the one who most emanated the joy I had witnessed among my Cambridge classmates. She played to her audience, but her audience might as well have been a bride about to be married or a mother with a new baby (the more traditional audience for this type of dancing) rather than a room full of wide-eyed men.

I wanted to meet Bashira, but one doesn't just walk up to an Egyptian woman, even a belly dancer, and expect to form a serious acquaintance. You might just as likely have her brother turn up and give you a drubbing, as have her turn away from you without a remark. So my first evenings in Asdiqa I spent getting to know the staff and the regulars. Eventually I became bold enough to ask Kasim, the owner, about Bashira and let him know I would appreciate an introduction.

He told me that she did not have a husband or a boyfriend and that she was living with her mother in a modest neighborhood in Cairo. Well good, that gave us something in common, as I essentially lived with my mother too.

One night between acts, Bashira was sitting at a table with Kasim. He beckoned to me and I came over with my beer in hand. He and Bashira were each having tea. Kasim serves Egyptian brewed beer, but in keeping with Muslim law, doesn't drink it himself. After introducing us, Kasim stood up to let me take his chair, saying he had some business to tend to.

I greeted Bashira in Arabic but she responded to me in well accented English. It turned out that she lived in America from ages 7-14. Her father had been educated there and later returned to work at an engineering firm. When he died suddenly, her mother moved the family back to Egypt. So we had something else in common - we were both fatherless.

We talked about our families, about the places we had lived, about the differences between East and West. Bashira was both astute and funny in her observations. She had always wanted to visit France, from the time she read Madeline in English, and Le Petit Prince in French class. She was quite intelligent and well read but never went to University. She was supporting her family, including an ill grandmother, while her siblings finished school.

We talked about belly dancing: about her first having learned it in her grandmother's village, where it was performed only for women; about how she later trained with a retired performer who was known by a friend of her uncle. I told her about my experience at Cambridge and she laughed.

I continued to patronise Asdiqa and sit with Bashira between sets. Soon she started coming in early and we would slip out to walk along the nearby Nile before her set began. The Nile after dark was Cairo's lover's lane: the only place that young people from traditional families could be alone. We held hands as walked under the protective gaze of moon. She let me kiss her gently and before long, she was responding enthusiastically. Sometimes we went to a late afternoon film or a dimly lit restaurant, but she was always a little furtive. She didn't want to be seen by anyone who knew her family.

I was enjoying our romance, in spite of it's chasteness, and became less eager to move on to my next job. We had been together for about a month when my working permit arrived and remarkably, the boat job was still open. If I took it, I'd be away for two weeks at a time with only one overnight in Cairo. I wouldn't have a full week off for three months. I talked it over with Bashira. "I don't have to take this job," I said over dinner. "I could stay here and find a teaching position. We could continue to see each other."

"That's nice of you Jamie," Bashira said slowly without looking at me, "But I don't think it's a good idea. I like you very much, but my family would never approve." I was hurt and surprised. With her American background, I didn't think Bashira would feel bound by the old ways. But she couldn't disappoint her family and marry a non-Muslim, and if marriage wasn't what I had in mind, she shouldn't be spending time with me, anyway.

I wasn't ready to propose, but neither was I ready to rule marriage out. What if I converted, I wanted to know; but I had to admit, I was unlikely to agree to that. So I took the job with the adventure trip company and continued to see Bashira on my Cairo nights, but only at Asdiqa. It wasn't the same for either of us and we decided to stop seeing each other.

I worked on the boat for more than half a year and then returned to Paris to celebrate Christmas with my family. By then, Arché and Lisette had gone off into the world to seek their fortunes, but we always managed to return home for Christmas. This time Arché came with Katrine and Lisette with her current beau. Mama was still with André so I was the only one unpartnered. That was the price I would pay for being a ramblin' man.

There would be other women in my life, but it seems that if they didn't break my heart, I would break theirs when it was time for me to move on to my next destination. There was one woman in the Faroe Islands whom I asked to join me on my next stop in Singapore, but although she seemed interested in seeing the world, she didn't share my wanderlust. Maybe some day I would settle down, but not until I was 40, at least.

So that sums up my love life. After Christmas I returned to Egypt to explore the upper Nile to its source in Lake Victoria with some people I met on the adventure tour. This would take us 2 months traveling mostly by canoe. Later when I returned to Cairo I learned that Bashira had married a Saudi and was living in Riyadh.

I stayed on in Cairo for a few more weeks to do some more chaste research on the taboo subject of prostitution in Egypt. Claudette had actually encouraged me to pursue this line of investigation and it did prove to be worthwhile in terms of getting a rather controversial article published. I would continue with this sideline in many of the countries I visited and have now completed the first draft of a book on the subject.

From Egypt I moved on to East Germany, where there had been increasing unrest during the waning days of the Soviet Union. I was there to watch the Berlin Wall fall. I was also in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Later I went to Hungary to live with the gypsies. I was a freelance war correspondent in Sarajevo, where I paid my dues huddled in a basement with others who had not fled the city, listening to the bombs fall around us and diving for cover as the plaster fell. Later I did similar war work in Kosovo.

I traveled extensively throughout Asia, including Thailand where I traveled with a highly respected troupe of female impersonators and collected a wealth of material on child prostitution. On September 11, 2001, I was in Boston at a international conference on women, poverty, and prostitution, when the World Trade Center in New York was blown up.

The planes weren't flying so I rented what seemed like the last available car in the city and arrived in New York that night. Arché and Katrine were safe but they had seen nearly the whole disaster from their apartment across the river in Brooklyn. As the days passed and people began to share their stories, it seemed that everyone knew somebody who knew somebody who had suffered a terrible loss. The doorman at Arché and Katrine's building had a son who was one of the firefighters who died in the rescue attempt. I stayed in New York for the next few weeks, taking copious notes on my impressions and discussions with residents, but I was never able to pull them together for an article.

I left a few weeks later when it became clear that the US and Britain were about to go to war in Afghanistan to route out the Taliban. I was working with a photographer and an interpreter, trying to spend time with as many of the parties as possible, including foreign soldiers, government officials, Afghan soldiers, and ordinary people caught in the crossfire. I had dreams of being able to interview Bin Ladin. I also had nightmares of being kidnapped, tortured, and killed.

I received a message from André six months ago to tell me that Mama had fallen and broken her hip. I was home within 5 days. Mama was not so old that this should have been a life threatening injury, but she did have fairly advanced Parkinson's Disease, and that made a big difference.

We learned about Mama's illness ten years ago when she was diagnosed. She was beginning to have an unsteady gait and slight tremors. With the diagnosis she learned that she had a progressive disease that would slowly worsen until it killed her. She would continue to lose control over her movements until eventually she would become almost completely rigid. The only saving grace was that there were medications to forestall the progression of the disease. She would be able to lead a fairly active life for a few years or more.

Mama put on a brave face and continued to live is as she always had - just a little more slowly and with more effort. She even continued to work, as Terri Swopes conveniently became ill, as well.

It was five years before Mama left the show. She moved from Chez Refuge to a wheelchair accessible flat with an elevator. Fortunately for all of us, André moved in with her. She said he was her angel and I think he was her children's too. We could all live our far-away lives, coming home for yearly visits, and know she was loved and well cared for.

Parkinson's Disease is a condition where a person's abilities are uneven throughout the day. By now Mama was mostly in a wheelchair, but occasionally she could stand and even walk. Like many people in her situation, she tried to maintain more independence than was actually good for her. André told me that he had wanted to assist her this last time when she tried to walk from the living room to the kitchen, but she bushed him off irritably. Then she fell.

She was still in the hospital when I arrived at her bedside, on morphine, but alert. I could see that she didn't look good and the doctors were advising that she go into a nursing home. André and I talked it over with her. She was willing to go to spare us the bother of looking after her, but we could tell that it wasn't really what she wanted. We decided that between the two of us we could care for her during the day, and that we would hire nurses for the night - so three weeks later she went home and was very grateful for the opportunity. She was never able to get out of bed again without a great deal of assistance, and walking was a thing of the past.

Lisette and Arché both came home during this period, but after a few days when they saw that Mama was stable, they both went back to their lives in America. Lisette had a part in a movie where filming was already underway and Arché had to get back to his restaurant and Katrine, who was now his wife and pregnant.

So André and I took the day shift: four hours a day each, seven days a week, and watched Mama decline. Her once expressive face had become a near blank. She could move her mouth in a paltry imitation of a smile or a frown, but only her eyes shone with their former richness. We had to feed her. We prepared all her favourite foods, but it got so she had more and more trouble swallowing; Eventually she could eat nothing but baby food and liquids. She was losing weight and becoming frailer by the day. Finally, the strain of caring for her became so great that we hired a day nurse, but one of us was still with her for much of the time. Death seemed to be lying in wait for her like a wolf panting outside our door.

The one spark of happiness in our family life came when Arché and Katrine's baby girl was born. They named her Mona, after Mama. They emailed us pictures within hours after the birth and for days afterwards. Mama was so delighted: her greatest wish was to live long enough to see her granddaughter. They promised that they would visit when Mona was six weeks old.

Mama did her best to last the six weeks. Whenever she tired of eating, we'd tell her to have a little more for Mona, and she would do her best. But at four weeks when she was so thin and had lost all ability to eat, we were told that she had no more than a week to live. We had known this day was coming for ten years now, and here it was. I called Arché and Lisette and they both made plans to come right away.

Mama held on the best she could. She could speak only in a whisper, and only a few words at a time, but now it seemed she had something important to tell me. She was sitting up, supported by the angled hospital bed, with André and me sitting on either side of her, when she turned to André and said something to him. He nodded back, reached over to her bedside table and pulled a file folder out of the drawer. He placed it in her hands and she painstakingly tried to take hold of it. In the end, he supported her as she handed the folder to me. She looked at me with pleading eyes and said, "I'm sorry, Jamie."

I didn't know what to expect. I opened the folder and read the first document. It was a marriage certificate for Mona Lisa Gilbert and Hector MacDonald, marked London, England and dated May 10, 1965. I was stunned. "You were married to a Hector MacDonald less than a year before I was born. Who is he?"

"British gentleman," she whispered.

"The British gentleman that might or might not be my father?"

"Is your father," she mouthed.

"Do you know for sure?"

She nodded, and looked at André anxiously. He came round to my side of the bed and I stood to meet him. He took two black date books out of the folder - one for 1965 and the other for 1966. He began flipping through the earlier one. "You know the date your mother was married. Here it is in her appointment book." There it was in girlish, loopy script: Wedding with a heart drawn around it.

"You see, they came to France for their honeymoon, and stayed for three weeks," I saw that there were several entries that confirmed this, along with plane schedules to and from.

André turned the page in the appointment book. "You see, here is when she arrived in Glenbogle, Scotland, her husband's ancestral home. He was laird of a great estate."

Mama grunted to get our attention. "Castle," she said.

"Yes, she wants you to know that he lived in an giant, old stone castle."

I let out a whoosh of air. "That's quite some gentleman."

"You see here that the Midsummer Ball was scheduled for June 21st," he continued. The Ball, which she attended, was held at Glenbogle House. Already things were going poorly with your father. She left for London the next day."

"That's not in the book."

"That's because she left impulsively early that morning before anyone was up. It wasn't planned."

"What about the other men?" I asked. I had to know.

André looked at Mama and so did I. "No others," she said.

"What! You told me there were others. Why would lie to me or are you lying now?"

"No others," she repeated.

"Look here a month later," André interjected. "This is the doctor's appointment which confirmed she was pregnant. And here a few days later is the train time for her return to Glenbogle."

"Yes, she found out she was pregnant with me and went back to her husband."

"Exactly."

"So then what happened?"

"When she arrived at Glenbogle she saw your father with another woman. He didn't see her, so she turned around and went back to the train station."

"And back to London... Where there may or may not have been others?" I was not happy about this and I looked at Mama severely." Tears were running down her cheeks and I bit my lip.

"Look here," André said in a business-like tone. He opened up the book for 1966. "See what it says here?" He pointed to a date in March.

It said baby due!!! It was March 1st, two days after I was born.

"This was the due date, the most likely day for you to have been born. Most babies are born within 2 weeks of their due date - 3 weeks at the outside, unless they are premature. Here's your birth certificate," he said, pulling out the next sheet in the file. "3526 grams. You were not premature."

"OK."

"If you count back nine months from your due date you arrive at May 31, the day they arrived at Glenbogle. Three weeks later, the last possible day you could have been conceived is June 21st, the night before she left for London."

"Oh."

"And, she didn't even date other men until after she started work 10 days later. And she was still too fond of your father to become intimate with any of them."

"Mon Dieu," I said. "Then why did she lie to me before?" I looked over at Mama again, but all the anger had drained out of me.

André put a hand on my shoulder and said softly, "Because she didn't want you to meet your father and discover that you were heir to the grand estate. She didn't want you to get caught up in the class-conscious, landed-aristocratic way of life that was so painful to her. She wanted you to have a normal life - a normal future."

I looked at André. I looked at Mama. Then I started to laugh. I sat back down in my chair and took her hand and laughed so hard that tears were running down my cheeks. When I finally calmed down enough to wipe my eyes I said, "Mama, you wanted me to have a normal life so you brought me up at Chez Refuge? You left me in the care of the homeless and recovering hookers instead of a British gentleman because you thought it was more normal? Mama, I love you but you are mad. Mad as a hatter... but I guess I wouldn't have had it any other way. " I cried as I clenched her hand with mine and then used it to wipe my face. André handed me a tissue and wiped Mama's face with another.

We sat in silence for a while, but I think I saw a bit of a smile in Mama's eyes.

Arché arrived with his family the next afternoon. He held tiny Mona up to Mama and put Mona's lips against her cheek. I took a picture of them together, so Mona would have it to remember the grandmother she would never know.

Lisette came late that night. She went in to Mama and watched her as she slept. She was still there when Mama woke the next morning.

The next day Mama seemed to be in a confused but dreamy state. Her eyes were open, but she was looking past us. I wasn't sure if she could see us anymore. That night André would not leave her side. With the nurse, there was room for only one more visitor. Lisette, Arché, and I took turns with her, while the other two sat and dozed in the living room, and Katrine and Mona slept in the guest room.

It was sometime in the wee hours when it was my turn to sit with Mama again, that I found her sleeping, mumbling at times and occasionally waking with a start, always to fall right back to sleep again. I didn't mean to but I dozed off in my chair. So did André, I think. When I came to, I was aware of the nurse leaning over Mama. She turned to me and said, "I'm sorry. She's gone. She went peacefully."

I was in such a fog with exhaustion and shock, being prepared, and yet unprepared, for this moment, that I stared at Mama with groggy eyes, assured myself that she was really just asleep, and went out to tell Arché and Lisette it was all over. "We can go to bed now," I said. "She doesn't need anything more from us." We hugged and comforted each other for some time before we did retire for what remained of the night.

We kept busy over the next few days, arranging the funeral, accepting condolences from friends, colleagues and admirers, sorting through Mama's things, hearing the lawyer read her will, and learning that she had left her flat to André, and a considerable amount to charities, but that there was still a considerable amount to be divided equally among the three of us. André urged us to take anything we wanted from the flat.

Lisette took Mama's jewelry, which she shared with Katrine. Arché took the brightly coloured family picture that he had painted as a boy, and Mama had framed and hung in the kitchen. It seems he was the only one to take after her artistically. I took all the documents of my case and a cuckoo clock I had given her long ago as a gift. I think I always admired it more than she did. We split the photos among us.

In a week Arché and his family were gone. Lisette went a few days later. I stayed with André to sort out the finances and because I had nowhere else to go for the moment. I spent much of my free time writing in my now electronic journal- about Mama, our family, and the deathbed confession. Much of what I wrote is now included in this memoir. André came in to my room one time while I was busy at my laptop. "There are a few more things she didn't show you that day," he said opening another file folder.

I raised my eyebrows and waited to see what else was to fall, but there were no more major revelations. There were the divorce papers, dated May 9, 1966, one day short of their first anniversary. There were two letters that she wrote to Hector but never mailed. They provided the details that I used in the beginning of this story.

I decided to Google my father's name on the internet and struck gold. Hector MacDonald was still laird of Glenbogle but he had left the running of it to his only son Paul. It seems that the modern world had finally caught up with the fairytale lives of the Scottish nobility and the MacDonalds had turned their castle into a bed and breakfast and their land into a nature preserve open to the public. They even had their own website with pictures of the castle and the loch and the family with lairds going back to my great great grandfather.

I decided I would call Glenbogle House and make a reservation to spend a few nights, hopefully meet my father, and decide whether I was going to reveal our family ties. I called and made a two night reservation for a few weeks later. In the meantime I had friends to see, a wedding to attend, and a board meeting for Chez Refuge, where I would help chose Mama's replacement.

That brings the story up to the present. It is now morning and I am having breakfast on the train, which is due to arrive at Glenbogle station in 17 minutes. At this point I know what road I am on, but I have no idea where it will take me.