Milton's Error

Elaine Pomeransky

From birth the buzz into my ear played the same melody: 'It can only get better'. But they were wrong. Life was never going to be an easy challenge, well, not for me. I was an Eastender ending up in Cornwall. No family, no lover and numerous brain ops with an honours degree in philosophy thrown in for good measure. I could cope with it all, except my daughter, Autumn, leaving.

The Cornish gulls screeched like Shakespearean witches watching me grieve. Then I decided to leave.

'Why Edinburgh?' they asked.

'Why not?'

My Cornish neighbours cried when they saw me off at the station on that day in 1997. As the train pulled out of Redruth Station I felt only relief.

No turquoise sea and white sands from my window, just old disused tins mines. The town was dying and the people there left without hope.

'Exeter St. David!' the voice bellowed from the Tannoy. A woman boarded with her two young children and sat in the empty seats opposite.

Exeter University. It had been a way of escape from Redruth for three years, even though I was 29. It had broken my heart leaving Autumn with her unemployed father whom I'd divorced when she was born. But going there was my only choice if I wanted off the benefits wheel.

I hoped it would have been an adventure, liberation for the mind. I'd envisaged sitting amongst a bunch of bearded philosophers debating the meaning of life. Instead I found myself with a breed of over-indulged bourgeois brats.

'You are the most beautiful women we've ever seen,' was the anthem they sang on arrival. But it soon developed into pulling every inch of me apart. The yuppies didn't even say hello, only the occasional snooty snigger; apart from one Etonian who wanted to spend the night in my bed.

The train pulled out, I was glad.

The children opposite were well behaved, scribbling in the colouring books their mother had been sensible enough to bring.

I had no money to buy a meal so took the soggy sandwiches from my bag and sneaked them into my mouth, as if apologising to the world that I took some of their airspace. The chocolate bar was welcomed, my fix for the day along with my growth hormone injection.

How green the countryside was, cows grazing, even some horses. My reflection in the window made me feel worse, how I'd aged.

'Plymouth!' the voice called again. Some of the passengers alighted, others were boarding. The last time I'd been to Plymouth was to have my nose fixed after the NHS had accidentally busted it whilst operating on the brain tumour, leaving me looking like a boxer. I'd had 8 nose jobs in all, plus surgery to fix the mess they'd made overdosing me on steroids until I'd been 17 stone and disabled for life.

The train passed Minehead where I'd once worked at Butlins when I was 18, hiding from husband No. 1. Chalet maid, and also made too many men happy. I'd first seen my second husband there, King of the Hippies, long blonde hair and dark beard reminding everyone of Jesus, except he wasn't. And he'd made it clear he wasn't interested in me, only his ego. As he too thought he was Jesus.

The next stop was Reading Station, the place of rock festivals, but I'd never managed to rock. My parents having separated when I was 17 and selling the family home leaving me homeless, whilst I was being beaten by my then partner; had gone back together a year later and moved into a one bedroom flat above a betting office in North London.

I'd gone to see them, expecting to be greeted by loving arms and an excess of apologies. Instead my father showed me the map to hitch to Reading and then Cornwall, where I would live rough amongst the hippies. The police had moved me on at Reading, so I tried to get to Windsor festival but somehow ended up outside Windsor Safari Park in the middle of the night.

I'd had no mother or father since the age of 17, no home with them. Yet I hadn't been a junkie or thief, never stole or begged.

Now all these years later she was living with my daughter and ex husband. How did she manage that?

'Waverly Station, Edinburgh. End of the line!'

But there were no flags of welcome, no piper piping me hame as I stepped from the train.

I had been through what seemed like a war, my wounds needed soothing. I'd tried all the religions, baptisms, exorcisms, heard all the sexism. But still hell didn't scare me, even though I'd once read 'Paradise Lost'.

One can't fear residing in a place that is familiar territory. Instead the going was much harder than I'd imagined, in what seemed at first sight to be a male orientated, anti English land.

'Hibs or Hearts?'

'Sorry, I only watch women's football. . .no, I'm not gay.'

'Why Edinburgh?'

'I'm Jewish, we wander.'

The gulls shrieked their welcome as I looked out from the balcony of my council flat onto Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill, on the day they handed me the keys in 1997. The red sunset splashed like an oil painted masterpiece across the panorama, and I sobbed that Autumn wasn't with me to share the sight, to feel the buzz of Edinburgh. She wasn't there with me at my window to see the fireworks that filled the sky; to smell the heather, to hear the pipes; to meet the people who had retained a culture that excelled all other cultures.

As the summer sun sank into the sky, I knew that Milton had got it wrong. Paradise had never been lost.