A Gift from the Gallowgate
This eBook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
Copyright © Doris Davidson, 2004
The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-84158-415-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-521-5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Introduction
The Forsyth Saga
Schooldays
Leisure Time
A Working Girl
. . . And War!
Motherhood . . .
. . . Divorce
A Second Career
Catastrophe
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
I was born on the last day of June 1922, and my parents, Robert and May Forsyth, chose my name very carefully. Doris, according to the book of names they studied, meant the Gift of God. What could be nicer than that? When I was old enough to think for myself, I was secretly pleased that they hadn’t called me after somebody. Not that any of our relatives had outlandish names, but it was good to have a name all to myself. It has had its ups and downs, of course.
When I started my second job – in a tiny office in the Coast Lines sheds on Jamieson’s Quay – I’d to walk along South Market Street, the part of the harbour where the coalboats unloaded their cargoes. It was safer to go along the edge of the quay rather than the other side of the street, bustling, even in 1938, with horse-drawn carts as well as smelly fish lorries and whisky drays rattling over the cassies (the Aberdeen version of causeways, our granite cobblestones). Newly sixteen, I enjoyed the appreciative whistles and wolf calls of the seamen, black-faced with coal, the stevedores on shore and any other males who happened to be around.
Then I bought myself a handbag with my initials on the flap. ‘DF’ they proclaimed, in large metal letters that no one could miss, and everything changed. The whistles and wolf calls were suddenly replaced by sniggers, even loud splutters of laughter.
‘Oh, would you look at that!’ one black-faced minstrel sang out, looking round to make sure that his mates were listening. ‘She’s got her initials on her bag.’ He turned to me again, grinning. ‘What’s the DF stand for, darlin’?’
Pretending not to hear, I walked on. I wasn’t going to tell them anything about myself. Alas, another wag picked up the teasing, but he went a step further.
‘You shouldna need to ask that, Billy Boy. It’s simple enough – stands oot a mile. DF. Damn Fool.’
This was taken up by all, completely deflating my ego, and although I knew they meant it as a joke, I clung on to that bag, with its initials, to prove that I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to buy another one then, anyway, and there was no way to remove the offending metal letters that had been sewn right through the lining as well as the suede outer covering. I never told anyone about this incident, getting so used to the teasing that I would call back, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ when anybody asked the fateful question.
Many years later, my young sister bought a bag with her initials on. She was working in the office of Hall Russell and Company, Shipbuilders, and fared even worse than I had. ‘BF’? Poor Bertha!
In the early forties, I was astonished to read that Doris Day, a young American singer, had taken the film world by storm. I was well aware that she hadn’t been named after me, but I enjoyed the reflected glory that came my way because of it. In company, somebody always announced, ‘And now we’ll have a song from Doris Day . . . (long pause) . . . vidson.’ The only thing was – I couldn’t sing for peanuts! But I went to see all her pictures, bought her records, fell in love with all her leading men. Oh, that Rock Hudson! What a heartthrob! Why did some wicked journalist have to spill the beans on him when he was dying of Aids?
The girlish dreams I had cherished through thick and thin, through war and peace, through marriage and motherhood, were swept away as if by a raging torrent. Oh, well, at least Doris Day, herself, is still hanging in there.
My maternal granny also took an occasional dig at my name, though never in a nasty way. She could never be nasty. I used to spend a lot of time with her at the weekends when I was young (the word teenager hadn’t then been spawned), and I always told her what I’d been doing at school during the week, or at work when I started to earn my living.
‘Maybe your Mum and Dad thought Doris meant the Gift of God,’ she would say, giving a mock sigh, after I’d been speaking non-stop for ages, ‘but nae in your case, lassie. The Gift o’ the Gab would be mair like it.’
I wasn’t offended, or hurt in any way. I knew my Granny loved me . . . and she loved to know what had been happening to me.
Of course, admitting also to my middle name (after my mother) gave rise to more teasing. Doris May? As soon as one of the opposite sex learned that, he came up with a load of suggestions, innocently humorous or indecently lewd – depending on the type of person he was.
For instance . . . ‘Doris May? And will you, if I ask you?’
That perhaps doesn’t strike you as having a double entendre, but accompanied by a leer and a sly wink, you can bet your bottom dollar it had.
*
I’ve long passed all those stages. Any comments on my name these days come from other women. ‘So you’re a Doris, too? There’s not many of us left now.’
I usually laugh and say, ‘No, there’s not,’ but it makes me feel like I should be thrown on the scrap heap.
Just the same, it still gives me a real thrill to see novels I’ve written on display in bookshops. My first name lets readers know I’m not a young thing writing in today’s style, about today’s problems. Mind you, the emotions underlying today’s problems are not so unlike those of fifty or even a hundred years ago; only the underlying causes of the problems are different. But I don’t intend to lecture on something as controversial as this. I’m too old to argue . . . though I still have my off moments.
I’m inclined to agree, however, with my Granny’s assessment of me all those years ago, and my family will no doubt endorse it. The Gift of the Gab never really leaves a person, does it?
THE FORSYTH SAGA
(or My Saga as a Forsyth)
1
My father, Robert Robb Forsyth, served his time (or part of his time) as a cabinet maker – we had a beautifully carved oak wardrobe in the house for as long as I can remember – but, for some reason, he then took up butchery, learning his trade from his namesake father. He was one of the sons mentioned in the sign above the shop at the top of the Gallowgate. ‘R. Forsyth and Sons’, it proclaimed, proudly, but before they joined him, it had proclaimed, just as proudly, ‘R. Forsyth, Flesher and Poulterer’.
When anyone asked him why it didn’t just say ‘Butcher’, he always replied, ‘Anybody can be a butcher, but it takes skill to be a flesher.’
The other son of the sign was my Uncle Jack, but more about him later. A third son, Billy, was foreman in Murray’s Meat Market, the killing-house, or abbatoir, to give it its Sunday name. We’ll come to him later, too.
There were seven girls in the Forsyth family, the butcher’s daughters as my mother was told when she wondered who the three strapping damsels were who marched rega
lly down the hill past the veggie shop where she worked. They were the three eldest, all well built even then. They gradually bloomed until they averaged around seventeen or eighteen stones, though it didn’t seem to bother them . . . or their husbands, for that matter.
They sometimes went to Blackpool on holiday, without their menfolk for some reason, and signed their postcards, ‘From the Three Fairies’. This always convulsed me. I could picture them dancing around in a circle (they were quite light on their feet considering their size . . . like Oliver Hardy, in fact), waving a wand in one hand and hoisting up wings and bosoms with the other. Awesome bosoms! I can recall Auntie Jeannie boasting that she could rest a cup and saucer on hers. She could, too.
The middle one in age, Jeannie, was a great swimmer earning several life saving certificates, and my cousins and I were made to go to the Beach Baths every week when I was about six or seven, to learn to swim. I was never very happy in the water, but Bella, the aunt assigned to me, was determined that I would not shame the Forsyth clan and battled bravely on. She used the method of holding me up at the back by the straps of my bathing costume, and I was making some progress across the water one day when I happened to look behind to make sure she was still there. She wasn’t, and with no confidence in my own ability (well founded, I may say) down I went, swallowing gallons of water mixed with large amounts of chlorine and small amounts of urine . . . or vice versa?
I never mastered that fear. The most I ever managed was about half a breadth before my toes took cramp. Jeannie, of course, took every opportunity to show off her skills. She dived from the very top platform and darted this way and that like a seal . . . an elephant seal? She made me feel ashamed of myself, but not enough to make any difference.
My mother and Auntie Ina, Uncle Billy’s wife, used to come along with us, and sat in the spectators’ gallery to keep tabs on our progress, but they were absolutely mortified one day when an oldish man, possibly there watching his grandchild, said to them, ‘I’m getting my kill at that fat woman. She’s making a right exhibition of herself, but you can’t help admiring her, can you? Not many her size would dive off the top board, and she hits the water with that much force, I’m aye expecting her to empty the pool.’
(Auntie Jeannie’s own description of hitting the water was, ‘If I don’t go in at the right angle, I land in a belly flop, and it feels like I’ve split myself in two.’)
Needless to say, Mum and Auntie Ina didn’t admit that they were in any way related to the ‘fat woman’, who had to give up swimming eventually because she couldn’t get a costume large enough to fit her. She had, as a last resort, actually knitted one, but you can imagine what happened. The weight of the water pulled it so far down that her hands weren’t big enough to cover what shouldn’t be on display as she came out of the pool . . . for the very last time! I hope the elderly gentleman wasn’t there on that occasion; the excitement might have been too much for him.
Robert Forsyth Senior also had four younger daughters, making up his total of ten children, three boys and seven girls, but none was so prolific as he. Between them, they only gave him seventeen grandchildren. One, Annie, emigrated to Canada in 1920, not long after her mother died, and didn’t marry until she was past childbearing age. She never came home, so I never met her, but she kept in regular touch with Jeannie, who seemed to take on the mother role for all her siblings.
Mum once confessed to me that, even after she married into the Forsyth family, her in-laws made her feel like a country mouse . . . which indeed she was, having only come to the city when she was about sixteen. My aunts and uncles could never have realized that she felt like this. They were extroverts with a tremendous sense of humour, and all very musical, Billy playing the violin and ukulele, Jack the mandolin, Bob (my father) the Japanese fiddle (one-stringed, with a horn at the side). He could also coax hauntingly beautiful tunes from an ordinary household saw using the same bow – his rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ brought tears to the eyes. They could all play the piano, and the girls had beautiful singing voices. I can’t recall hearing the men singing; we children were packed off up to the attics while the adults had their musical evenings.
I suspect that Mum felt lacking in some way when she was with them. She was oldest in a family of four, her father, James Paul, being a farm ser vant who, like all of that ilk, shifted his place of employment, if not every six months, fairly frequently. She had one sister, Nell and, eventually two brothers, James and Douglas. It must have been quite a cultural shock to her when her father got a job at Rubislaw Quarry and they flitted to Aberdeen. I’m not too clear about his job there, I think he was on the crusher, but Maisie was still a shy, naïve country lass, so naïve, in fact, that at twenty-one, she had an even greater shock when she went home from work one day and found a pram in the kitchen. ‘Whose bairn is it?’ she asked, and couldn’t believe what she was told. The infant was a new brother and she’d had no idea that her mother had been ‘in the family way’.
My mother was a very clever child even though she’d had to change schools so many times, but there had been no money to allow her to carry on her education, and it ended at Peterhead Academy when she was fourteen. Her first job was as a kind of maid/nanny to the owners of a ‘Johnnie-a’thing’ shop at Stockbridge, not far from her grandparents’ croft at Toddlehills, near Longside, which is only a few miles from Peterhead, if you want the exact location. She liked Mrs Duncan, the shopkeeper’s wife, and would have been quite content to stay there until she met a young man she’d be happy to marry, but her father had found a new job and insisted that she accompany them to the big city. I’m quite sure, however, that she never had any regrets about being uprooted.
In 1918, when she first saw the ‘butcher’s daughters’, their brother Bob would still have been with the Welsh Fusiliers in France. In the photos we have of him, he had three different cap badges during his army ser vice, because of the vast numbers killed in the various battles. The remnants of each regiment were amalgamated into one, taking the badge of whichever had most survivors. Reading a photo/postcard he sent to his sister Jeannie, listing the various places he had been, it is obvious that he was lucky to come through the conflict alive, yet it was only after my mother’s death that I discovered the Military Medal he’d been awarded for bravery in 1917. I made enquiries about it and was sent a copy of the commanding officer’s report for the three days in November when the Allies were trying to recapture a wood near Ypres. This certainly explained why the men under him were from so many dif ferent regiments, but only mentioned that Corporal Robert Forsyth had been commended for outstanding bravery in the field, and gave no details.
Mum and Dad must have met after he was discharged from the army – sadly, I heard nothing about their courtship, but I wish now that I had asked – and they were married in 1920. This was an eventful year for the Forsyth family. Jane, their mother (a most imposing figure of a woman from her photographs, always wearing huge hats with feathers or some sort of decoration) died having her gall-bladder removed in a private nursing home, and Annie emigrated to Canada. Billy, Jack, Bob (my Dad) and Jeannie all got married, although their father told Bob Mackay, ‘You can’t take my housekeeper away from me.’ Fortunately, Jeannie’s husband was quite pleased to move into the house above the butcher’s shop, where they lived until the property was condemned early in 1939. They were given a council house in the Middlefield area, where hundreds of new square blocks were springing up. With the intervention of a war, all of the condemned buildings in the Gallowgate would be left standing until well into the fifties.
My parents rented a two-roomed furnished flat in Rosemount Viaduct, an impressive street of granite-built tenements with shops at ground level, that sweeps down to the Central Library, the South Church (now called St Mark’s) and His Majesty’s Theatre. Aberdonians once knew this trio as Education, Salvation and Damnation, but that’s by the by. Dad paid £50 for the key to the flat, as was usual in those days, and he
built a garage he named Erskine Villa (the make of his car) in a lane off Raeburn Place at the rear of our tenement. We could see it from our kitchen window. Our parlour looked up the hill towards S. Mount Street, with a big mill-like building as a focal point. This was a canning factory, where, for instance, the Coop sent their oatmeal to be tinned for exporting. It later became a secondhand (junk) store run by a man nicknamed ‘Cocky Hunter’, why, I don’t know. After the last war, this eyesore of a building was pulled down and replaced by a circular block of flats, which won the architect some special award. We ordinary mortals, though, look on this, too, as a monstrosity, and there have been whispers that it will be demolished soon.
Before he acquired the Erskine, Dad had a motorcycle/combination, and early snaps show me as a tightly wrapped bundle in my mother’s arms in the sidecar. Most of the men in the family, Dad’s brothers and brothers-in-law, owned a vehicle of some kind, from humble one-stroke motorbikes to the impressive Lagonda that was Uncle Billy’s pride and joy. Every Sunday, there was a mass exodus of Forsyths from the city – it’s strange that they all thought of themselves as Forsyths, even those who had just married into the family – looking for interesting places to have our picnics. I can’t remember bad summers in the late twenties and early thirties; it always seemed to be sunny, cold perhaps even in June, but still sunny. Ah, the rose-coloured memories of youth.
No buying sandwiches and ready-made pies or quiches from Marks and Sparks in those days, though. This was a time when wives were expected to cook everything themselves, long before Aberdeen at least had ever heard of Mr Marks and Mr Spencer. It was a case of each family carting potatoes, a basin to peel them in (water to come from the burns and rivers we parked alongside), salt, sausages and bacon, an ordinary pan, a frying pan, two Primus stoves, cutlery and dishes, not forgetting matches, because not one of the brood smoked. None of the men drank or swore, either, so although they were a somewhat raucous crew, there was no harm in them and they certainly knew how to enjoy life . . . which was just as well. Most of them died quite young.
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