Shortly before this, Auntie Gwen had taken her two children, Jean and Michael, to Aberdeen away from the Blitz, and they stayed with us until practically the end of the war; she, herself, went back to London to be with Uncle Jim. At that time, Bertha would have been eight, Jean Paul would have been about eleven and Michael about five or six. That Saturday afternoon, I decided to give the kids a treat, and took them to His Majesty’s Theatre to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Even Jean was inclined to cover her eyes when the wicked Queen was on the screen, and the two younger ones were almost under the seats in thoroughly enjoyable fear. They liked to be scared out of their wits.
We sat through one and half shows, and came home just in time for tea. As soon as I set foot through the door, Mum said, ‘I’ve had a visitor. He came not long after you went out, and he was here all afternoon, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Do you know who it was?’
Thinking it was one or other of the ex-lodgers on leave, I shook my head and kept smiling, but her next question, shot out abruptly, made me shake at the knees.
‘Who did you say you were out with last night?’
‘B . . . Betty and Kitty.’
‘Oh, yes? And what picture did you see?’
This was easier, so I told the truth; I can’t recall what it was now.
‘And did Andy enjoy it, as well?’
The words dripped with sarcasm, her eyes had narrowed as she waited for me to try to extricate myself from this awful situation. But she knew that I knew that I’d been rumbled, and what could I say?
A little disappointed that I wasn’t giving her a chance to wipe the floor with me, she went on, ‘You told him a lie, as well as me.’
I could explain that. ‘I didn’t want to go out with him again . . .’
‘You told me he was a coal dunter.’
‘I never said Andy delivered coal.’ I was quite put out by this. I was being accused of something I hadn’t done.
‘You said he worked in Adam Brothers, and you didn’t say he worked in the office, so what was I supposed to think?’
(Today’s girls will be sore pushed to believe this account, even toned down a bit, but I swear that every word is true, and I don’t think I was the only girl of that age to be in the same boat.)
The kids, who had dashed out to the garden to play until tea was on the table, came in now and saved me from any further tongue-lashing.
Not long after that, Andy was called up and wrote to me several times from his different postings. Then, maybe a couple of years later, there was a photograph of him in the Evening Express. He had been killed in the first thousand bomber raid on Cologne, but not, as you may expect, anywhere near Germany. They had completed their mission safely, had returned across the Channel safely, and all the crew were killed when their plane collided with another above their own aerodrome. It was very sad and I felt it all the more because of the shabby way I had treated him. He was a nice lad.
Back to 1940. It soon became clear to us that German pilots were concentrating on the docks, and there were no air raid shelters anywhere near Jamieson’s Quay. The sheds were repositories for sugar, cattlecake, locust beans and various other commodities, most of them in sacks stacked in high piles. It was the head storeman’s brilliant idea to remove the central sacks from several of the piles, leaving vacant covered areas to which we carried our chairs when the sirens blew an alert. Then, setting our ledgers on the seat, we knelt on the cement floor to do our work, sometimes for only about ten minutes if it was a false alarm, but sometimes for well over an hour or even longer.
Could this be why my knees aren’t what they should be nowadays?
We had some terrifying moments during air raids, although now that I come to think of it, we shouldn’t have been so scared. After all, we were on our knees, and what better position could we have taken up? I have a strange feeling that at the worst moments, when we thought we were about to be sent to Kingdom Come, we did actually put up a prayer. I have heard many ex-servicemen, including my Jimmy, admit that they prayed during attacks by shellfire or bombs even if they had never been inside a church, or had only gone when forced to as a child.
*
It may have still been 1940 or into 1941 when we heard the sound of feet marching along the quay towards us. Visions of jackboots and German soldiers with pudding-basin tin helmets flashed into my too imaginative mind, but curiosity made us all go outside to see what was going on. It was a battalion of Seaforth Highlanders on their way to the North Boat (actually bound for Shetland, I discovered later), and we smiled to them as they passed, perhaps blushing if any of them winked.
Then my heart gave a jolt. There, about the middle of the line, was Jimmy, a big grin on his face at the astonishment on mine. We couldn’t speak to each other, couldn’t even touch hands because of the sergeant beside him, so our eyes had to give the message instead – a message that should have been obvious to both of us.
It was obvious to Miss Murray, Hazel, Peggy and Helen, who had replaced George when he was called up. There was little work done for some time, discussing why these young lads were being sent north, when all the fighting would be across the English Channel. Then the others settled down again, but I couldn’t. I felt as if I had lost the most important person in my life; as if he were on his way to hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. He wasn’t of course, although by this time, Norway was occupied and what was called the ‘Shetland Bus’ had been set in motion. This brought Norwegians away from their oppressors, but also took many of the men back to join the underground fighters, plotting against the enemy, doing their utmost to drive them back to Germany. I know very little about this but what I do know was that Jimmy and his comrades slept in the huts the fisher girls had used when they followed the herring, but he always said in his letters that he wished he were in the heart of the fighting.
Our correspondence continued, of course, and he visited every time he was on leave, and although it was wartime, we still managed to enjoy ourselves . . . other girls for him, other boys for me . . . nothing serious. We were too young to be serious.
It was different now. I was over eighteen and Mum could hardly stop me from going out with the cousins who turned up every now and then. It was quite funny, really. One of the storemen observed one morning, ‘I saw you going into the Majestic wi’ a sailor last night?’
‘That was just my cousin,’ I replied, knowing it was a question. It had been the son of one of my father’s sisters, Tommy Duffus, who had joined the Royal Navy.
Perhaps a few weeks later, another of the men said, ‘I saw you going into the Palais wi’ one o’ the Brylcreem boys on Saturday.’
‘That was my cousin,’ I replied again. It had been Douglas Mackay, Auntie Jeannie’s son. The RAF lads were often called the Brylcreem boys. It wasn’t a compliment, though. It was a suggestion that they thought themselves better than any of the other services, which – I’d better whisper this – they still do.
The crunch came another morning. ‘I saw you wi’ a different lad last night, though he wasna in the forces. How many cousins are you going out wi’?’
‘That wasn’t a cousin,’ I said, without thinking. ‘That was my uncle.’
‘Aw, come off it! Pull the other leg, it’s got bells.’
I had spoken the truth. It was Doug Paul I’d been with, and there was definitely nothing between us. What happened was that we sometimes used to mention that we’d like to see such-and-such a film and we arranged to meet inside the foyer. He paid his own ticket and I paid mine. We’d been brought up almost like brother and sister, and we were always quite comfortable with each other, whereas the cousins were apt to hint that they wished we weren’t cousins. I don’t think they did, really. Going out with Douglas Mackay always meant going to the Palais de Dans. Tap dancing had proved to be of little interest to most of the girls he had met while he was away, so he’d been forced to develop some skills in the ballroom. I wasn’t really a good dancer, but when I was with Douglas
, I could do all the intricate steps you could think of – even scissors steps to the slow foxtrot. I think, of all my escorts, I enjoyed my evenings with him most.
In those days, early in the war, going dancing meant wearing a long dress unless you were in the Women’s Services, and I had been given a lovely pink taffeta from Tina Forbes, who lived round the corner from us. She was a few years older than me, and gave me another evening dress later, lemon with yards of material in the skirt. I felt like Ginger Rogers on the dance floor. It was even more fun going home – no buses after midnight. It was a fair distance to walk, so we took short cuts through back streets, humming the tunes the band had been playing, until we came to the long climb up Mid Stocket. The houses set back from the street, we could give rein to our high spirits.
Singing quite loudly, not that I was any great shakes as a singer either, we would waltz up the middle of the road, or do a bit of tangoing, or quick fox-trotting, and in my long dresses I felt on top of the world. We must have annoyed all the residents in the houses we passed, but we didn’t think of that.
Going back to the subject of air raids, one unusual incident springs to mind here. We finished work at 6 p.m., and it was usually pitch dark by then during winter, so we were quite surprised to see a red glow in the sky when we came outside one night. There had been no alert, but there had been several bad air raids where the bombers had sneaked in and no sirens had been sounded. Unsure of whether to go back inside or chance going home, we huddled together trying to place where the fire was, and Miss Murray narrowed it down to somewhere near the beach. We knew that the gasworks couldn’t have been hit or the whole of the city would have heard the explosion. That was a relief. There weren’t many houses in that area, so what could be burning? At any rate, the bombers had missed the actual harbour, spread widely though it was.
We made our separate ways home after a while, quite unsettled to know that we could all be wiped out with no warning, but that was the kind of war it was – no quarter given or taken. Civilians were in the front line as well as the armed forces. Our sleep was interrupted that night, as it so often was, but, despite the all clear not being sounded for over an hour, we heard no enemy activity. This was sometimes called ‘a false warning’ which made you think a mistake had been made and there had been no bombers in the vicinity at all, but we had a marvellous defence system and quite often the bombers were repelled before they ever reached the city. It is well known that Aberdeen had the most air raids in Scotland, but not the worst, thank goodness. Glasgow and Clydebank had that dubious honour.
We learned next day that the fire had been near the beach, practically on the promenade itself, but it was not a result of bombs. The Scenic Railway in the carnival on the Queen’s Links had gone on fire for some reason – they didn’t think it was sabotage – and it was very fortunate that the flames hadn’t attracted enemy attention earlier, when they were at their fiercest.
We were still making use of our makeshift shelters, but had a visit one day from an official from Lever Brothers, our head office. He wanted to know how we were coping and was amazed when he saw what we had to do. In Port Sunlight, they had presumed – if they had thought about us at all – that there was a shelter in close proximity. He promised to do something about it, but we’d been promised all sorts of things before – a new typewriter, a new handbasin to replace the cracked one in the cloakroom, etc. – but nothing had materialised. What could he do about this, anyway? He couldn’t order the Town Council to build an air raid shelter especially for us, for heaven’s sake. Could he?
9
We had discovered Miss Murray’s age by accident. Before George was called up, he used to tease her by asking her when she would have to register – the morning paper regularly printed details of when the different age groups had to register for conscription or warwork. On the point of coming out with what would give away her age, she always broke off. ‘You’d do anything to know how old I am, wouldn’t you, George Logan? But I’m not telling you.’
There had been nothing nasty about question or answer. It had actually developed into a standing joke between them, but when he was called up, none of the girls had the nerve to continue with it. We were dying to know – for the simple reason that she was so cagey about it – but we didn’t have the guts to ask. Then we noticed that she blanched while poring over the relevant page one morning. We had noticed before that she flipped through the pages and only read one thoroughly, so when she went for lunch that day, Hazel, Peggy and I grabbed the paper and discovered that the forty to forty-five age group of women were next to register. So now we knew at long last, if not her exact age, at least to within five years of it. I have never understood why she was so reluctant to tell people herself. I’ve always been quite open about mine; in fact, I’m quite proud these days to tell people that I’m over eighty.
*
It must have been late 1941 or early 1942 when Miss Murray read out the latest communication from Head Office and left us all flabbergasted! We were to be moved out of Jamieson’s Quay altogether. This was a way of solving the problem of our safety that none of us had foreseen, and we girls weren’t at all sure if we liked the idea. We had grown accustomed to, even quite enjoyed, the banter we got from the seamen and dock workers, and their wolf whistles set us up for the day.
Not only that, where would we get the sugar for our tea? Since it was put on ration, Charlie, the head storeman, used to poke a pencil into one of the sacks of sugar, fill our bowl and then close the hole by rubbing his fingers over it a few times – like a magician passing his hand over and making something disappear. This was repeated, on a different sack, each time our bowl was empty. It didn’t occur to us that this could be regarded as stealing – it was on a par with Evelyn getting Steel’s storeman to provide us with bars of chocolate. At least we got a teabreak in Van den Berghs – just as well, for there were no shops anywhere near us.
There were no shops close by in Bon Accord Square, either. It was a lovely street, with Georgian buildings all the way round and a massive rectangle of lawn in the middle. What had originally been private houses occupied by wealthy Aberdonians were now given over entirely to offices – all kinds of businesses, from solicitors and private consultants down to lowly margarine manufacturers. Strangely enough, the caretaker of our particular building was Mrs Logan, George’s mother, a fact that he dwelt on each time he came home. ‘Why couldn’t they have moved here when I was working for them? I’d just have had to get out of bed and come upstairs to work.’
It was a great change from the Coast Lines sheds. We had one huge room on the ground floor – Mrs Logan’s premises were below that – and the window was shaded by heavy wooden louvered blinds that had more than likely been there since the place was built, and were ideal for the blackout. There were several other offices in the same building, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of place where people mixed. Each little group of staff members kept to themselves, and if you met someone on your way in or out, you just exchanged a nod and a ‘Nice morning’ or ‘Nasty weather today’. That was all.
I don’t know if it was the same all the way round the square (round a square?), but I always got the feeling that the men – only those over the age for conscription were left – and women who worked upstairs considered us a flight beneath them in more ways than one. Our new abode was certainly more opulent than our last.
Not long before we moved from the quay, I had gone into the Labour Exchange on my way home for lunch to volunteer for the WRNS – I don’t know why I chose the Wrens – but I was refused on the grounds that I was employed in the distribution of food. This apparently exempted me from other war work. Accepting that I’d never have the excitement of being in uniform unless I changed my job, I settled down to remaining an ordinary civilian for the duration. Hazel and I went out together as often as we could afford to, going to the pictures straight from work then to one or other of the little tea-rooms on Union Street, whichever we happened to be neares
t.
Hazel always made for a seat where she would be in full view of at least two young servicemen (one for herself and one for me), and she usually managed to find an escort home. I, of course, was left with the one she hadn’t fancied. If an alert was in force – when no buses ran – I was glad of a companion on my long weary walk home in the pitch blackness, but if there was no air raid, I said I’d prefer to take public transport. It was perhaps no quicker, considering the time I had to wait sometimes, but it was safer – much safer.
Then Hazel met a Canadian airman one night and things changed. She made a foursome date, a blind date for me, and I was dragged along to the Ice Rink in Spring Garden. She was an accomplished skater – she and her sister went there regularly – and the boys, being Canadians, were almost as good as professionals. I, on the other hand, was an absolute novice. It was my first time on ice, and I spent more time on my backside than on my feet. I wasn’t the only one, I’m glad to say; there were lots of others in the same boat.
Thankfully, there was half an hour allotted for speed skating, so I sat down on a bench to watch, my soaking rear end getting colder and colder as the minutes passed, but still glad of the rest. Then it happened! As they whizzed round, Hazel and her partner were letting each other lead for a few minutes then changing over, and on one change, coming from behind her, the boy didn’t leave enough space between them and his skate came right up the front of Hazel’s leg. He went to hospital with her in the ambulance, and I was left, feeling sick at what I had seen, with the other boy. I can’t remember either of their names, but ‘my date’ saw me home and even supported me right into the living room because I was still shaking. Shocked at our story, Mum gave us strong tea to steady our nerves and didn’t give me her usual lecture about picking up strange men.
Gift from the Gallowgate Page 10
