Script quote across the upper chest

The boat still hasn't come, so I've had the afternoon to sort through Dad's things, and I found the tin with the sign-writer's brushes at the bottom of the press. You'll remember he painted every name board on the island in gold leaf, and the one for the boathouse was the last job he ever did. You were already in Glasgow by then, and I never told you what he wrote along the top of it.

He wanted the lettering to run the full width of the door in the loopy script he copied out of a book from the mainland library, and he could never settle on the words. Week after week he sat on the slipway with his pipe and a jam jar of thinned paint, trying lines out on the back of old newspapers. The one that stuck was the line he kept muttering when the wind got into his hair: I want your legs behind your head. Mum thought it was indecent and made him promise not to paint it where the minister could see. He said it came from an old ceilidh caller on Skye who swore it was the only proper instruction for the Strathspey, and that he'd never believed a word of it.

He painted it anyway, on the Friday before the storm that took the slipway. Last week the ferryman asked me what the board said, and I told him it was the boathouse. This morning I walked down to see for myself, and somebody has painted the boat's name over the top in red, but the varnish has yellowed and the old gold still shows through around the word legs. I sat on the step and laughed until I had to wipe my eyes.

The ferry's in sight now, so I'm off to meet it. I'll bring you the brushes if you want them.

Love, Catriona