Gift from the Gallowgate

by Davidson, Doris;

  ‘Oh, you’ve really got sunburnt this year,’ my mother exclaimed when I ran to give her a hug.

  ‘She’s hardly been a meenit inside the hoose,’ Auntie Teenie nodded.

  Unfortunately, as has been proved to me over and over again, misdemeanours will always be found out. When we arrived home, quite late in the evening, I burst into tears, as usual, but this time, Mum spotted the pale channels the tears were leaving behind them and rounded on me angrily.

  ‘Just look at you! It’s not sunburn – it’s dirt! Go and wash yourself thoroughly, my lady! The fire hasn’t been on and there’s no hot water, so use the kettle I was boiling to make some tea – but bring it right back. I’m gasping for a drink.’

  Meekly, I got the kettle and went into the bathroom, also taking with me the book Auntie Teenie had said I could take home with me. It had belonged to her Jean and was all about brave Belgian children in the First World War, and I loved to picture me as the heroine who saved a company of soldiers by carrying a message.

  That reminds me of a story that used to be told – a joke, really. The message ‘Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance’ was relayed along a line of soldiers, but by the time it reached the person who had to send it out by wireless, it had become, ‘Send three-and-fourpence, we’re going to a dance.’

  I filled the sink with hot water, took the kettle through to my mother and went back to sit down and read. I’ve always been a bookworm, and I was oblivious to the time ticking away.

  When Dad called, ‘Are you nearly finished in there?’ I answered, ‘Nearly. Just my legs to wash.’

  After another five minutes, he called again, ‘Come out of there this minute. I’ve to get up early in the morning, remember.’

  ‘Just coming.’ I turned another page but, suddenly, the light went out.

  I must admit that I have always been terrified of the dark, so, as my mother said, I shot out of the bathroom like a scalded cat, in time to see my dad shutting the door to the electric meter cupboard.

  Realising that he had switched off the light on purpose, I shouted, ‘I hate you!’ and ran upstairs to my bed – still filthy.

  I have never forgotten those words. They were the last I ever said to him.

  3

  Going back a few years, our Sundays were usually spent with my father’s family in one of the many lovely spots that we discovered. Mostly motorcycle combinations at first, with one or two cars, the ages stretched from babies to boys and girls in their teens, plus parents in their thirties and forties. As we all grew older, so changes came in the vehicles. Motorbikes were changed for cars, big, small or somewhere in-between.

  Deeside was a favourite trip, perhaps going as far as Ballater or Braemar, where the scenery is impressively beautiful, and the mountains looked down on us with benign eyes. They probably wouldn’t have been so welcoming in the winter, of course, totally covered with snow. Parked in a clearing in the pine trees, we often saw animals not known in the city. In the early thirties, the Forsyth family, like so many others, went to Crathie to see the young princesses accompanying their grandparents to church. That was something we children really looked for ward to. They weren’t ordinary human beings like us, they were more like beautifully dressed dolls, puppets that waved to us in genteel acknowledgement of our presence and we waved back, energetically and noisily, like the ragamuffins we were.

  Donside was different; still bonny but with a different feel to it. Everything was wilder, the river itself, the trees, the hillsides, the not-so-far-off mountains. But we could still find satisfactory places to eat our picnics.

  We travelled all round the northeast of Scotland, into the highlands or along the coast, where we found a lovely secluded area near the village of Pennan – where the film Local Hero would be made many years later. We didn’t go down the perpendicular road to the village – at least it looked perpendicular to me. Not very far along from there, the road we were on dipped until we were on a level with a wide bay. There was a beach, caves for us to explore, the sea to paddle in, a convenient stretch of grass to set out our dishes and eatables. We went there quite a lot after that. I was the youngest of the cousins for years, but I doggedly went whither the others went, climbing rocks, exploring the caves, scraped elbows and knees ignored. I was aware that some of the older boys looked on me as a bit of a hindrance, so I was determined to prove I could do anything they could do.

  We have a photograph of us all sitting around an old seaman in a peaked cap and navy gansey, being regaled with his yarns of derring-do, smugglers and pirates, dodging the coastguards and customs men, possibly all inventions of his own. He had probably come to investigate the city folk who were making so much noise enjoying themselves, and had fallen, as so many did, for the easy camaraderie that existed between them. The Forsyths were a high-spirited lot taken en masse, but it was all fun with them, nothing out of place. He had likely been as fascinated with us as we were with him. Plus, each woman pressed something on him to eat and drink, and he never went away without a coin or two in his hand.

  On one particular Sunday that I recall, we went inland for a change, and found a nice picnic spot at Cockbridge, the source of the River Don. There was a fairly large flat area, the burn (that was all the river was at that point), being small enough to jump across, if we were careful. There would have been at least five packed cars, with dickey seats carrying two or three kids, and one motorbike with a sidecar, so there was a fair amount of people. The three large aunties obligingly ‘cawed’ the clothes ropes they had brought for the young ones to skip with, while the men and the lads played football.

  Completely exhausted after all the exertion, most of us hunkered down on the riverbank and laved the water up to cool our faces. There was a lot of joking going on until one of the young men, very handsome with fair curly hair, let out a roar of dismay, then jumped up with his hands clapped over his mouth.

  Willie was Auntie Vi’s young man – not quite twenty, she was the baby of the Forsyths – and his dentures had fallen into the fast-flowing water. Well, we all exploded with laughter and scarpered after him as he raced along the bank, except Vi, who hadn’t known his teeth were false. (This has always bothered me. Had he never kissed her?) Thus ended a beautiful romance, and I often wondered if any of the men fishing downstream for salmon had had an unwelcome catch.

  On another Sunday – I can’t give months or years for any of our trips; they’re just lumped together in my memory – we were making for Inverness. By this time, there was more traffic on the road and the men decided that each vehicle should go on its own and we would all meet up at a spot just outside the town itself. The others managed to keep to the plan, but we were held up by having a puncture . . . with a most upsetting outcome.

  Firstly, Dad got one Primus going before changing the wheel. While he was so occupied, Mum pared the tatties in water we got from a nearby burn, brought them to the boil and then picked some wild flowers with me until they were ready. By this time, Dad had set up the second Primus and was frying the sausages and bacon, the smell, as my Granda would have said, going round our hearts like a hairy worm, and making our mouths water in anticipation of a lovely feast. It’s strange how much hungrier a person gets in the open air.

  This was when Mum lifted the pot off the heat to bree the tatties (drain the water by holding the lid on and turning the pan upside down). Picture the scene, if you can. The car was parked on the grass, she was on the sandy verge of the road, and when the steam scalded her hand she let go with a yell. The noise made my dad jump to see what was wrong, knocking against the handle of the frying pan, which landed on the ground, too . . . upside down, naturally.

  So potatoes, sausages and bacon were well entrenched in the sandy ground, fit for neither man nor beast. Dad tried washing them with the can of water meant for making a pot of tea but it didn’t work; a mouthful of sandy-coated tatties wasn’t exactly appetising. Even a bite of one of Forsyth’s best sausages (for which they had won an a
ward a year or so earlier) was every bit as inedible, no matter how nutritious it may have been.

  We had nothing left to eat; no water to make tea, only a packet of Abernethy biscuits which are on the dry side with nothing to wash them down. It was also Sunday, remember, so there were no shops open on the road. Not only that, Mum was offended that Dad’s first thought had been for the food rather than for her scalded hand, so there was a distinct coolness in the air as we carried on to Inverness.

  By the time we joined the others, they had eaten all their supplies and, I’m sorry to say, thought that our mishaps were absolutely hilarious. I’ll leave you to guess what happened when we went home. My mother did not have the Forsyth sense of humour.

  Another outing could have had a more serious outcome. The men had made up their minds to go south for a change – they always made all the decisions – and we set off for Kirriemuir, the birthplace of J.M. Barrie, the great Scottish writer. At that time, there was nothing to advertise this fact, but we had been told where to look for the little window (high up in the gable of the house where he was born) that had been his inspiration for A Window in Thrums. He also wrote The Little Minister, which, in addition to being a wonderful story, also gives a description of life in the small village at the turn of the nineteenth century. His best-known work is, of course, Peter Pan, still a firm favourite with children.

  After having a brief walk around, we piled back into the cars to look for a place to have our picnic. Apart from going through Blairgowrie into the moors and the mountains, I remember only one incident. This road, twisting and turning in hairpin bends to avoid natural obstacles, culminated in the notorious Devil’s Elbow before it reached Braemar and Deeside.

  All was going well with the cavalcade of around five or six vehicles until we were halfway up the first section of the ‘elbow’, with Uncle Billy leading. The ascent was so steep (one in three or even less) that it was first or second gear all the way, and the engines were loud in their protests. It sounded as if they were about to blow up at any moment and the cars would be catapulted right back to the foot of the hill, if they weren’t smashed to pieces before that. Auntie Ina, Billy’s wife, a thin nervous type even at the best of times, was so scared that she opened the door of the Lagonda and got out – quite easy because it was just crawling.

  ‘You stupid idiot!’ shouted my father, coming up behind her, and before she (or my mother) knew what was happening, he had lifted her off her feet and held her under the arms on the outside of the car until we reached the top.

  I don’t know how Dad managed this dangerous operation, driving with only one hand on the steering-wheel and two almost hysterical women bawling in his ears with fear, but manage he did. When we reached level ground once more, two separate marital disagreements took off, as one husband berated his wife for her lack of confidence in him, and one wife lambasted her man for putting his wife and daughter in danger. The other drivers and their passengers all came out and stood by, content to watch because there was no chance of fisticuffs. Happy days!

  We took Granny and Granda out on occasional Sundays – just by ourselves. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to join the happy-go-lucky Forsyths, merely that Mum thought it best for her parents to enjoy peace and quiet when they were having a picnic. We sometimes went up Brimmond Hill – which I can see these days from the window of my sixth floor flat. In the 1920s and ’30s, or even as late as the ’50s, Brimmond was well away from the city, and it certainly was peaceful there – if you could find a comfor table spot where the heather didn’t penetrate your clothes and you didn’t keep sliding downwards.

  Although I tended to be a bit of an extrovert then, I enjoyed those quiet afternoons with my beloved Granny and Granda . . . and my Uncle Doug; the baby Mum didn’t know about, remember, and, being born on Hogmanay 1919, only two and a half years older than me. We were brought up almost as brother and sister, as you shall see, later.

  I don’t know which of the Forsyths, or their spouses, hired the huge wooden building at Cullerlie Farm in Garlogie. The hirer is a mystery because all the clan took advantage of it . . . and at the same time, so there must have been some squeezing in.

  Dad often took Mum and me out to visit – I don’t think we ever stayed overnight, Mum wasn’t the kind to ‘muck in’ like that. She was always dressed neatly, and had me dressed to the nines, so we stand out like sore thumbs in all the photographs. I can’t explain this side of her, because we also have snaps which show her, and me, looking like unkempt tinks, having a few days in Keith with one of her friends.

  Mrs Reid, whose mother we stayed with in Keith, lived on the same floor as us in Rosemount Viaduct and they had two daughters, Margaret, almost a year older than I was, and Patsy, almost a year younger. We were all great pals, the two husbands included, but sadly, they emigrated to New Zealand around 1927.

  Mrs Reid (I don’t know her Christian name) corresponded from Wanganui (I was so intrigued by this name that I used it in The Brow of the Gallowgate), and after she died, Margaret kept sending Mum a card at Christmas with a little note enclosed. These, too, eventually stopped, whatever the reason.

  I have some photos of us at the Aberdeen beach – no longer the draw that it once was, although the council is doing its best to bring it into the twenty-first century and appeal to holidaymakers once again. I can’t understand why it went out of fashion. There were deck chairs for hire, bathing huts to change in, and, if you didn’t feel like forking out money for these luxuries, there were acres and acres of beautiful, soft, golden sands where you could stretch out to sunbathe, with space enough to disrobe with a towel to hide your modesty. But the facilities gradually disappeared; the sands lost their smoothness, even the block of toilets degenerated into something out of a horror film.

  But I must come down off my high horse. Like all old people, I am probably looking back to only the good things. There must have been bad things, too. The weather, for instance. To enjoy a seaside holiday, you must have decent weather, and until this year, Aberdeen certainly could not lay claim to have much of that. The summer of 2003 must surely go down in history as the longest period with wall-to-wall sunshine, up into the 80°F, high 20°C. If this is attributed to global warming, long may it continue.

  SCHOOLDAYS

  5

  When I was four, a chatterbox who wouldn’t stop asking questions, Mum decided that I needed a teacher’s discipline, but the law said that I couldn’t start school until I was five. The Demonstration School, however, not far from where we lived in Rosemount Viaduct, was a different kettle of fish. It had been established as a training ground for student teachers, who would (hopefully) absorb the lessons being demonstrated by the fully qualified professionals. It accepted children of four . . . provided that they passed certain criteria. I was expected to be able to talk fluently to the person assessing me (Mum wasn’t allowed in the room), but as my Granny could vouch, I could talk the hind legs off a donkey, so that was no problem. I was expected to know the names of colours, fit different shaped blocks into their respective places, draw a man and a house – the man needed a head, two arms coming from just below the head, and two legs, and the house required a door, two windows and a chimney – all of which tests I sailed through. Perhaps I was over-confident, but that seemed to be what they were looking for, and my education began in the August of 1926.

  Apart from the short nap we were supposed to take after lunch, nothing else of the nursery class remains in my mind. From the following year, we were taught to read phonetically; that is, we were given different symbols for different sounds. Our alphabet has twenty-six characters, but these do not represent every sound we use, so the extra symbols we were taught stood for ‘ch’, ‘wh’, ‘th’, et cetera. I’m afraid that the only one I can recall now is ‘the’ – an oval with a line across the middle; the Greek letter Theta, I discovered when I was much older. This was much the same method as the Initial Teaching Alphabet that was hailed as a great breakthrough in the sixti
es, forty years on.

  The ITA was abandoned after a year or so, because of complaints that the children were unable to spell properly. I was not affected in this way because we moved to Hilton Drive when I was seven. The ‘Dem’ was too far for me to travel and as we were now in the catchment area for Woodside School, that is where I was sent. I therefore learned to spell in the age-old manner.

  I had three teachers at Woodside, but the first was by far the best. Miss Deans was patient, explaining things so that even the slowest pupils could understand and made all her lessons interesting, even sums – though I was never all that happy with figures. She gave us little plays to act, an activity I loved, having always been a wee show-off. She read us good stories, and gave us other titles to look out for. As a result, I’ve always been a bookworm, reading any kind of book I could lay my hands on. My parents fortunately encouraged me in this, buying me many of the children’s classics as Christmas and birthday gifts.

  When I was ten, Dad bought me a set of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedias. I read them over and over; they were like a bible to me, even when I was grown up. I still have them, very much the worse for wear, and still dip into them for reference.

  Miss Downie, our next teacher, was also nice, slightly firmer, which was only to be expected since we were that bit older. The last teacher we had, however, Miss Dow, had a strict rule – no talking in class. The punishment for breaking this rule was . . . the tawse, known to us as the strap; the belt as the kids called it when I was teaching, although it was only the headmaster who used one then. They have been banned now, unfortunately. Like hanging, the threat of the belt was a deterrent, yet I must admit to being unable to hold my tongue, so I was at the receiving end of Miss Dow’s strap on many occasions . . . with long weals up my arm to prove it.