Gift from the Gallowgate

by Davidson, Doris;

  Sandy was still in the Merchant Navy, his peacetime job as well as wartime, and we only saw him between trips. I should have realised that this was building up to another dangerous situation.

  … DIVORCE

  11

  If I thought that living with my mother was bad, I found that living in a strange woman’s house was much worse. I don’t suppose Mrs Campbell (I’ll call her that) was actually picking on me – it could have just been her way – but she seemed to be constantly reprimanding me for something. I would need to remember that she needed to use the washing line sometimes, as well as me. She didn’t need her afternoon rest disturbed by my daughter making a noise. Would I please be careful of her linoleum when I was carrying heavy things up or down the stairs? And so on.

  I couldn’t really see what she had to complain about. I had to wash quite a lot; children could get dirty in five minutes, especially when they were outside making sand pies in the plot of earth she was allowed to play in. My daughter was very well behaved . . . as a rule. I was always careful of her linoleum, and her wallpaper when I was going up and down the stairs. Of course, I was still in my early twenties, and it wasn’t until I was much older and had a house of my own that I could see her point . . . and my mother’s. At that time, however, I took Sheila out as much as I could, for there were many lovely walks in the vicinity.

  I often landed up at Mid Stocket. I didn’t admit to my mother that I didn’t enjoy living away from home, but it was good to have two young men to talk to. Both Johnny and Jimmy must have realised how unhappy I was. Johnny had bought a motorbike and came across one night to take me for a spin. Sheila was sleeping and she never woke up in the evenings, so I asked Mrs Campbell if she would mind listening for her. To my astonishment, she gave a smiling nod.

  I believe now that this was actually the start of my slide downhill. Tearing along the country roads at 50 or 60 miles per hour, with my hair streaming out behind me and my skirts blowing up over my knees – I hadn’t yet taken to wearing trousers – was a taste of freedom I’d never experienced before. It never entered my head that I shouldn’t be doing such a thing, that my husband probably wouldn’t like it . . . or if it did, I ignored it.

  I rode on the pillion several times before Sandy came home for almost two months and unknowingly stopped that pleasure . . . any pleasure I had in the little nest I’d made. He wasn’t happy with the room, he wasn’t happy if I asked him to look after Sheila while I went to the shops, or did a washing. This was a most complicated business anyway. I’d to bring up a pail of water, boil it on the Primus and rub the dirtier items between my knuckles until I was satisfied that they were clean. Then it was a case of wringing by hands, going down to empty the basin in the outside drain and filling it with clean cold water for the rinsing.

  This process had to be repeated three or four times until everything was hanging on the line. Sometimes, when white towels still had stains, I laid them flat on the grass still dripping with soapy water. This usually took out stains, particularly if it was sunny, and it was safer than using bleach, a hint picked up from my mother with regard to nappies.

  My suspicions that Sandy wasn’t the fatherly type proved well founded. As soon as he decently could after breakfast, he was off on some excuse or other, dressed in one of the light-coloured suits he favoured, which made him stand out from the usual navy blues, parson greys and browns other men wore. I’m quite sure that he wasn’t involved with another woman, but he did like to meet people, to go into a bar and chat with other men, to go into a café and have a laugh with the waitresses. I resented being left alone so much. After all, I was on my own with our daughter when he was at sea, and I felt that he should take over some of the responsibility when he was at home.

  Storm clouds were gathering. I was now at a stage where, like Rhett Butler, I didn’t give a damn. Why should I sit in every evening, knitting, sewing, reading or listening to the wireless, when my husband hadn’t taken me out once while he was home?

  (Incidentally, I had gone to see Gone With the Wind by myself when I was eight months pregnant with Sheila – a marathon four-hour sit. Thank goodness there was an interval.)

  When Jimmy started coming to see me, giving me books he knew I’d like to read, I welcomed him with open arms, figuratively speaking. I did wonder sometimes why Johnny had never come back – I missed the motorcycle runs – but I didn’t care too much. And so things went on for some weeks.

  The scene is set, isn’t it? A small room, a little girl asleep in her crib, a double bed and a young man and woman trying not to show how they felt about each other. At first, we did sit in the armchairs and discuss books we’d enjoyed reading and it was just a goodbye kiss at the door. That couldn’t last, of course.

  Books were forgotten eventually. The kisses began when he came in and things just built up without us as much as thinking that what we were doing was wrong. Very, very wrong. As wrong as it could possibly be.

  Nemesis had to come. Jimmy had told Johnny the first time he came to see me, which was why the motorcycle runs stopped, then he foolishly confided that we loved each other. Johnny was well known as a ladies’ man, so this news hadn’t really upset him, but his pride probably got a knock. Whatever prompted it, he ‘clyped’ to my mother; told her exactly what was going on and sat back to watch the fireworks.

  I needn’t go into great detail. Mum had a blazing row with Jimmy and told him to leave her house. Then she came to tell me what she thought of my ‘carry-ons’, and forbade me to see Jimmy again. Also, she said she would tell Sandy the minute he came home. Which she did.

  I should have been ashamed of myself when my husband confronted me, but I wasn’t. I was sorry I’d hurt him – I hadn’t planned it, it had just happened; the usual excuse, I suppose – but that was us finished.

  I don’t like re-living that horrible time. I know I had only myself to blame for being in such a situation, but it’s easy to be wise after the event. In any case, I don’t think my marriage to Sandy would have lasted very long anyway. We weren’t really suited and we didn’t have the same interests; he was a born bachelor, finicky, moody and only used to mixing with his own kind of people. I was inclined the other way; I could, with my usual gift of the gab, hold a conversation with anybody. It was better that we split up then than go on until we came to hate each other.

  I didn’t know until my mother told me later that Sandy had gone back to Mid Stocket and told her what he thought of me. I was all that was bad; a whore enticing men to come to bed with me, but I needn’t think I’d get away with it. He would never give me a divorce. Jimmy Davidson would never be able to marry me, though he waited till his hair was white as snow and he’d a beard right down to his feet. I think this is what tempered Mum’s anger at me . . . a little bit.

  Really upset after she told me what had happened, I still had to face up to everything. My allowance was stopped. Even when Mum and Auntie Ina both told me I should write to the Ben Line and claim something for Sheila, I wouldn’t. I had hurt Sandy enough already, and in view of what he’d said about me, I wanted nothing more to do with him.

  The thing was, how would I exist with not a brass farthing coming in? Because I’d never been in a position, before I married, to buy more than the necessities of clothing, I had spent more than I should – not a fortune, by any means, just too much. I had made sure that Sheila had the best of everything, shopping mainly in better-class shops, with the result that I had saved very little. There was nothing to do but climb down and crawl back to my mother. I sold all my furniture and household items for £100, which would keep me going until I found a job. Mum was willing to look after four-year-old Sheila to let me go out to work . . . and she could also make sure that Jimmy and I had nothing more to do with each other.

  Fate, however, still had something up its sleeve with which to clobber me. Some months earlier, the doctor had informed Woodend Hospital that I needed a D and C, and the appointment they sent was for the week after I moved b
ack home. That was all right, Sheila would be well looked after, so I went in without a qualm.

  The examination took place the day before the operation, and imagine how I felt when they told me they couldn’t operate because I was pregnant. The doctors and nurses saw nothing strange about this, I was a married woman and pregnancy was only to be expected.

  BUT! This pregnancy hadn’t been expected, and Mum and Auntie Ina were coming to visit me the next afternoon, supposedly after the deed had been done. It was a different deed that had already been done though, and I couldn’t sleep for worrying over how to break the news to them. When I tearfully told them, afraid and ashamed, their shocked expressions, the way their eyes darkened and their mouths pursed up told me to prepare myself for a tongue-lashing such as I’d never had in my life before.

  It probably wasn’t a good thing that they were forced to bottle up their anger in the hospital and in the street on the way home, for it kept building up. The explosion was therefore all the greater when we went into the house, and I think I had better draw a veil over what was said. It’s not something I want to resurrect. I can still feel the deep burning shame that I felt then.

  *

  I had the worry now of not being able to take a job, and it was a worry with no money coming in. I had to do something. Even though I was terrified of what the doctor would say – Dr Agnes would have torn a strip off me and sent me away with a flea in my ear, but she had died a year or so before – I forced myself to go and tell him my predicament. He listened, handing me a hankie to staunch my tears, then told me to go back to the waiting room and sit until all his patients had gone.

  For those who don’t remember, or are not old enough to know how it used to be, there was no system to let people know whose turn it was. Patients came in and sat down, and if you were smart, you counted how many were in front of you and made a mental note of their faces. Then, when the last of them was called in, you knew you were next. If you didn’t pay proper attention, some unscrupulous person who came in after you would jump the queue. The point is, of course, that there wasn’t a queue. You sat down anywhere in the room and had to keep your wits about you.

  There were honest people too, of course, who said, ‘I think it’s your turn now’, or ‘You were before me’, and that was how it was that night. Two people at different times tried to tell me it was my turn, and I had to say that the doctor told me to wait till last. I sincerely hoped that neither of them realised why.

  I had been there, the second time, for about half an hour, when I finally went though to the surgery. The doctor said, ‘I shouldn’t really do this you know.’

  I knew it was against the law to perform an abortion, but I thought that this only applied to unqualified people, back-street quacks, not real doctors.

  Noticing my bewilderment, he smiled. ‘It’s frowned on because it’s dangerous, you see.’ Then he told me to lie down on the couch. I don’t know exactly what he did, but it was a few days later before the foetus came away.

  Although Jimmy had gone, Johnny was still at Mid Stocket Road and made things quite awkward for me by giving me sly glances as if to say, ‘I know what you’ve been up to.’

  To get away for a spell, I took Sheila to London for a holiday, paying for only one ticket because children under four could travel free, and I assured myself that it would be all right. How could they tell I was lying if I said she was still within the age limit?

  The ticket collector in King’s Cross would never have picked up on it if my own daughter hadn’t spilt the beans. I answered his query, ‘How old is the little girl?’ by saying, ‘She’s only three.’

  Sheila, bless her little cotton socks, beamed at him proudly, ‘No, I’m four.’

  I looked the man straight in the eye. ‘She means she’ll be four on her next birthday.’ He accepted that. He wasn’t to know that her next birthday was not for another 345 days, when she would be five, not four. He did, however, have the hint of a twinkle in his eye as he waved us through.

  The other little incident wasn’t so nerve-wracking. In fact, it was quite funny. On the Sunday, Uncle Jim’s children were making ready for Sunday School when Auntie Gwen said, ‘Why don’t you take little Sheila with you, Jean?’

  I don’t think Jean was very pleased, but Sheila was determined to go. When they came home, however, Jean was hopping mad. ‘I’m not taking her with me again! D’you know what she did?’

  ‘Not until you tell us, dear,’ her mother smiled.

  ‘When we stood up to sing our first hymn, she sang, too.’

  ‘What was wrong with that?’

  ‘She didn’t know any of the words.’

  This made me guess what was coming, but I waited to be told.

  ‘She sang a different song. Stone Cold Dead in de Market! I could have died!’

  I had to explain that this was the song Sheila had taken a fancy to since she’d heard it on the wireless, but the words weren’t exactly suitable for church, because the last line went, ‘She killed nobody but her husband.’ Mind you, I don’t remember any more of it, but in spite of Jean’s mortified expression, we adults couldn’t help laughing.

  Our return journey was made with no query as to my daughter’s age.

  It must have been well on in 1948 when I started as a clerkess in McDonald’s Garage in Craigie Loanings, an offshoot of the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society. The SCWS also had a Funeral Undertaker’s business in Bon Accord Street under the name of Campbell’s Motors, supplying extra funeral cars when needed. Apart from McDonald’s being a garage with mechanics and petrol pumps, there was a large area of parking spaces to let out. There were very few private garages in the area, the houses (of silvery grey granite) had been built before the advent of motor cars. We also ran quite a good taxi service – Rolls Royces and large Austins for weddings and funerals as well as ordinary run-of-the-mill hires.

  Because the garage was open all day every day (24/7 as they say nowadays) there was a night clerk who took over from me at 6 p.m. and handed back to me at nine the following morning. It didn’t register with me then that he worked a fifteen-hour shift to my twelve (less dinner hour and a half), but I expect he got a higher rate of pay. Our salaries were paid directly into the bank from Head Office in Glasgow, so I don’t know how his compared with mine. I wouldn’t have cared whatever it was, for I didn’t envy him working through the night, often on his own in the vast garage empty of other human beings.

  Petrol was still rationed then, and being short when I counted the coupons at the end of the day was devastating. It was actually far worse than being short in the money tally. Several customers, even regulars such as businessmen, tried to cheat us, and occasionally succeeded. They would engage me, or whoever was on the desk, in conversation while John the garage-man was filling their tanks, maybe take us out to see a new car they’d purchased, then jump in and drive away without handing over the required amount of coupons. Their petrol would probably have been charged to an account, and there was really no way of proving their guilt.

  I can remember many times when Ian helped me to check my sales, and when I helped him to check his, trying to match the vehicle numbers on the coupons to the customers who had charged off. There was even one teatime when we were so engaged and a doctor came in to park his car. Dr Fraser (not his real name) always came in for a wee chat, and when he saw us feverishly engaged in checking petrol coupons, he said, ‘Are you short, Ginger?’ He always called me that although I considered my hair to be chestnut or auburn, not ginger.

  But I was never angry about it. He came to my rescue, and Ian’s, more than once by telling us to take what we needed from the supply that he’d ‘banked’ with us. Doctors were allowed much more fuel than ordinary people, and he sometimes didn’t use all his in the time allowed.

  Dr Fraser featured in a humorous incident early one New Year’s Day. Hogmanay was the busiest night of the year for taxis and I was asked to work on until the pressure eased off. It was three i
n the morning before Ian and I were able to stand back and draw an easy breath. The phone had been ringing continuously and there had been a steady stream of people walking in looking for a taxi, as well as motorists coming in for petrol. No law against drink-driving in those days.

  Waiting for a taxi to take me home was like waiting for it to rain pound notes. I had given up hope and was about to hoof it all the way up Mid Stocket when Dr Fraser bounded in. ‘My God, Ginger!’ he exclaimed when he saw me. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here at this time of night?’

  It was almost half past three by this time, so when he learned of my predicament he said, ‘I’ll take you home . . . as long as it’s not too far.’

  I ought to have recognised the signs, but I was dog tired, so I got into his car and off he drove – up the little bit of Craigie Loanings, along Westfield Terrace and across the ragged junction at Mile End into Mid Stocket. That took longer to type than it took the good doctor to drive. He could have been on a racetrack, the speed he was going, and it was lucky that we met no other drivers under the influence. The Stocket is a long, almost straight hill, so we shot up there like a bullet from a gun until we reached the part where a small road goes off at the side to a row of three old, low houses. This was likely the original road, before it was straightened out.

  This was when I recognised how inebriated he was. Slowing down only a little, he drove into this side road, then – and this is not one word of a lie – he wove in and out of the trees that separated him from the road he should have been on. Back where he should be, we had only to pass the Lovers’ Lane and Oakbank School (a reformatory) and I was home. I told him when to stop and I got out of the car on shaky legs, well aware now that I was very fortunate to still be in one piece.