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after this, my parents responded with characteristic generosity to the onset of my diabetes. They offered the whole family six months in Edinburgh in the hope that Scots climate, medicine and theology would work wonders. During that time I spent three fascinating days chauffeuring them around Argyll in search of a suitable place to retire. Mother seemingly could not have enough of the wind, rain, ruins and glories of light that went with them. Dad stuck to the indispensability of really mod cons for the elderly. Those who have househunted in Grahamstown will recognize the tension: otherwise ideal houses that suffer from one huge flaw. Eventually in Strone they found 'Kinrara' which had two great windows that looked west on to the Holy Loch and framed the constant traffic of Polaris subs, the floating dock, occasional puffers, the small sails and the large ships down the Clyde. Mother saved her much diminished energy for the weekly Sunday School class; their other occupation was their world-wide correspondence. A letter from this time described their two main expenses as heating and postage. After five years they decided to leave Scotland and return to the States. They had packed everything, readied it for shipping and sold the house when my father, who was rarely sick, had an heart attack. A week later he died. Marvellously the rest of the family came like seagulls from Puerto Rico, New Jersey, California and South Africa. Three weeks later, after Keswick, I put mother on the ship for South Africa as they had planned. That time, instead of being here for nine weeks, she was here nine months because of shipping strikes. A Greek freighter, loaded with animals for American zoos offered her a cabin. There was her ark; she crochetted the rainbow into rugs: the unchanging trinity of primary colours stood for the purity of God; the mixed intermediate colours for the fruitfulness of his creation. She spent a good deal of that voyage teaching the crew to read and speak English. Her text book was the Bible. After three years in America we invited her to return here where pace and space seemed more ample. She was determined to visit, but not to reside with the family. But this
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