We never really know do we? by Kath Delgado
We never really know, do we? We think we know everything because we can use technology. We can turn on our central heating at home when we are abroad. We can lie in bed and defrost the car. We can even sit in church and discreetly set the oven to the right temperature, for the correct time, and the correct cooking mode, and so we think we know.
On the other hand, we don’t know who we are passing in the street. We don’t know who is sitting beside us on the train because we are losing the art of conversation and so we don’t know anything about the people round us.
I didn’t know about the elderly man wearing the Harris tweed jacket and kilt, sporting an originally ginger but now greying handlebar moustache, except that he looked different and frankly slightly out of place. No-one was sitting beside him in the train to Glasgow, and I didn’t even wonder why as I sat down and said, “Good morning” in the warmest way I could muster on the kind of day that chilled you to the bone. My feet were numb in my ill-chosen, high-heeled shoes, my coat too fashionable for the weather. Yes, I looked good, but I felt so cold. I must have shivered because this gentleman asked if I was cold, and when I said yes frozen, he moved closer. Nowadays someone would be screaming safeguarding, but I was just so cold that I immensely appreciated that he was prepared to share the warmth that emanated from his corpulent body through his Harris Tweed jacket. We chatted about him and his family and about me and mine. He asked about my work, and I told a little, but only what was socially acceptable under the circumstances of our meeting. I didn’t ask about his. I don’t know why.
“So why did you sit beside me?”
His deep voice punctured my thoughts, and I thought it a strange question. I paused then asked, “Why not?” He smiled and quietly said, “Indeed why not”. We chatted some more, and I found him to be well educated, polite and a considerate conversationalist, although perhaps a slightly eccentric person. I do rather like eccentricity, actually. It brings a colour to life that would otherwise be pretty bland. I remember John Simpson, the travel reporter whom I find extraordinarily articulate, describing his first impression of India with its flashes of vivid colour and its air perfumed with spices and fruits and less appealing odours. He said that the trouble with globalisation is that all the colours of the world blend into an amorphous grey. Life would be so without eccentricity.
We both clearly enjoyed the chat from Edinburgh to Glasgow. I did wonder why people looked at us, or rather at him. We disembarked. He shook my hand and said a cheery goodbye. I continued on my way to Glasgow Royal Infirmary and thought no more of this brief encounter.
Later that day, in fact in the evening as we watched the 10 o’clock news, there was a lengthy report about the court case for a heinous and brutal murder that had taken place. It had shocked Scotland to the core because in those days a murder was unusual, let alone such a terrible one. There was little doubt in the minds of the Scots that the accused was irrefutably guilty. But everyone is entitled to a defence and a fair trial. In the UK, you are innocent until proven guilty unless, of course the crime is contempt of court, in which case you have to prove your innocence. But this? This was murder.
It turned out that my new acquaintance was the defence lawyer and thus had, unreasonably in my view, become the second most hated man in Scotland, the first of course being the perpetrator. This had made my new friend so high profile and unpopular that no one wanted to sit beside him on the train and, if I am being totally honest, probably nor would I had I known.
But I did not know and so I had the pleasure of meeting this delightful, eccentric man for a moment in time before he put on his robes.
I am so thankful that I had the honour to meet the man and not the lawyer. My life was left richer and I wiser.
On another occasion, I walked into the physiotherapy department where I worked and introduced myself to a new patient. He was of diminutive stature, looked desperately sad and was thin, pink and shiny. His long, pure, white hair had an enviable brilliance. He had a black eye and a cut above his nose. He had been mugged and sustained a fractured hip. I thought he looked as though he had been put in the ward tub and scrubbed clean before being sent for physio. I wondered if he had been mugged in the Grassmarket where, at that time there were many homeless people. He had. He was homeless. But as it turned out I had judged him without knowing him. How dare I!
I could not engage with this man, and of course as a physiotherapist engagement is key. I chatted, but his head was bowed and his eyes were dull. I asked questions and got perfunctory answers. I put my hand on his arm, knelt down on the floor in front of him, searched for eye contact and looking him directly in the eyes said, ¨You have the most beautiful white hair.” Bingo! He returned my gaze, gently cupped his hand on my face, and his pale blue eyes shone. He slowly smiled and said, “Thank you! That is what my wife used to say. I have never cut my hair since the day she died, and I never went back home.” My heart wept for him. My heart wept for me and my keenness to judge. I am so grateful to have met that beautiful soul. He changed me!
And so, dear reader, I ask you, why do we watch period dramas on Netflix in search of knowledge, instead of turning to our grandma and asking what her life was like? After all she lived through it. And at what point did age become a division? At what point did we decide that one day you are a working person with a valued opinion and the next you are retired and merely become one of ‘the elderly’?
And so we never really know, do we? When we do, what value do we put on knowing? As for me, I now want to know the stories that are locked inside you just waiting to get out, just waiting to feel important enough to be asked. And once shared, then I can finally say, “Now I know”.
