After my grandfather died, I claimed his heavy, silk-lined overcoat and wore it with Doc Martens. I sat on it in parks, slept under it on people’s sofas. Then, one day, it disappeared ...
I
was 15 when Grandpa died. He was 69, too young, but on the plus side he was doing what he most loved – digging on an archaeological site. We weren’t close in the way I was with Granny; he could be quite scary. But we got along fine and I liked him. Mum said I could help myself from his wardrobe.
I had only known him dressed for retirement, in blue workers’ overalls for archaeological digging, or baggy beige shorts for caravanning holidays. But it seemed he had been quite dapper back in the day. I helped myself to collarless shirts and a couple of suits (the best was a silvery-grey mohair one that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Paul Weller’s wardrobe). And this overcoat.
It was a proper coat – black, knee-length, heavy, silk-lined – made by Crombie of Aberdeen and worn by statesmen and royals, but also movie stars and pop stars. And now by me. I thought it was cool, and it became more than a coat; it was a place of refuge, a thick new outer layer of protection, against not just the cold but teenage vulnerability and insecurity. Plus, it was a little bit of Grandpa, hard to forget with the faint whiff of pipe smoke that lingered, even after dry cleaning.
