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There are Kafka-esque voices. In ‘Mind Away’, elderly Nora attempts to explain her befuddled state of mind. ‘It’s not that my thoughts are running away with me, more like they’ve run off with somebody else,’ she explains to her daughter. Eventually she decides her thoughts have escaped to the mind of a young, handsome doctor. Nora’s daughter reluctantly agrees to humour her mother and track down the doctor. Meanwhile, Dr Mahmoud suddenly starts blurting out Nora’s batty, random thoughts during consultations. ‘I’m finding I don’t like wearing tights any more. It’s a hassle pulling them up over my ankles, my knees,’ he inexplicably informs a wide-eyed patient. ‘Mind Away’ is Kay at her most lively and imaginative.
Much later, we are introduced to Vadnie, the Jamaican nurse from Margaret’s nursing home. Astonishingly, Vadnie inhabits a complete fantasy world, her only true friend is Margaret. Margaret’s ‘tomato soup coloured cardigan’ plays on Vadnie’s mind, mingling with vaporous imaginings of a loving husband and dutiful children.
Occasionally a story creeps in which gives the reader the uneasy sensation of being trapped in an experimental women’s workshop at the Camden Fringe Festival during the 1980s. ‘First Lady of Song’ features a shape-shifting woman who embodies dozens of female singers throughout the ages — she is 300 years old, her life never ends and neither, it seems, does her pretentious tale.
‘Grace and Rose’ details the pride of newly-weds who become the first lesbian couple to marry in Shetland. The result reads like a self-satisfied round-robin letter. ‘Rose makes me feel like the first woman on the moon,’ gushes Grace. By the end of the story I felt as if I’d been dipped in melted chocolate and coated with sugar.
When on form, Kay’s gift for portraying the quirky inner lives of older women can be compared to Jean Rhys or Fay Weldon. If we are able to skim the occasional ‘womanist’ guff in this patchy collection of stories, there are gems of genuine pathos awaiting discovery.
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