Our wedding took place in the registry office on fifth December 1953, with a reception in the Bon Accord Hotel in Market Street. I say reception, but it was actually only a meal with enough time to linger over the coffee so that both sides could get acquainted. Sixteen of us sat down at the table and everything went very well. I was wearing a powder-blue, woollen two-piece suit, while Jimmy had bought a new navy suit from the Fifty-Shilling Tailors. The only other suit he had was too easily recognised as demob issue, and he considered it unsuitable for such a special occasion.
The repast over, Jimmy and I took a taxi to the Joint Station – an extravagance since it was just round the corner from the hotel. We were bound for Rosyth, where Jimmy’s other aunt lived. Auntie Jess was present at our wedding, and she was spending a holiday with Auntie Ann in order to let us have the use of her house for a week’s honeymoon.
We had to leave the train at Kirkcaldy – the first time Jimmy had been there since he was just days old – and take a bus to Rosyth. It was roughly nine o’clock by the time we reached the house where we were to be alone for the next seven days – a marvellous feeling! I made a pot of tea, then we went straight to bed, I too tired and Jimmy too under the weather to do anything other than sleep.
The following morning was Sunday, we made good use of our ‘long lie’ and after a breakfast of tea and toast, Jimmy went out to buy a newspaper to give me time to organise the lunch. Auntie Jess, a very good cook, had left some pies and tarts for us, and with no fridge available, they had to be eaten quickly. For that first meal, I chose a steak pie and a rhubarb tart – perhaps too much pastry, but Jess’s pastry was melt-in-the-mouth quality.
I prepared some of the vegetables she had bought in, and we sat down to a very appetising first course; the steak pie was magnificent and the veggies done to a T. Then I went into her tiny scullery to make some custard for the tart – Jimmy meanwhile washed up the dishes and pans we had used so far. The custard thickened the way I liked it, I poured it into a jug for serving, and we carried tart and jug through to the table in the living room. I allowed my new husband to swamp his helping with the custard and he waited until I helped myself before we began to eat.
If you have never tasted a mince tart swimming in custard, I strongly advise you not to try. My only excuse was that the small amount of gravy that had escaped from the hole in the top looked like rhubarb juice.
We spent many holidays with Auntie Jess in Rosyth, and I was to discover that, often, she wasn’t as gracious as she had appeared on first acquaintance. She had been adopted into the Davidson family as an infant, and had turned out to be so clever that, when she was old enough, she had been sent to Mackie Academy in Stonehaven. (This was a bit of a sore point with Auntie Ann and the sister who had died during the war, because they, too, had been clever but finances at the time hadn’t allowed them further schooling.) I have no idea where Jess learned her secretarial skills, obviously in a proper college, because she became one of the first typewriters (as they were called in her day) in the Law Courts in Edinburgh. At the age of forty, she met a sergeant of the Leith Police. Anyway, they married as soon as he retired, he was much older than she was, and, sadly, they had less than fifteen years together when he died.
Even having been married, she was still an old maid at heart, and her way was the only way possible for everything. She had no patience with children, nor with other people, come to that. On one visit, we were in the middle of breakfast when the postman delivered a letter. She took it in and opened it. ‘It’s from Mabel.’
Mabel was a great friend of hers and we smiled understandingly. After a few seconds she said, scathingly, ‘She’s bought a new blue coat. I can’t understand why she wanted a new coat, she’s got at least three already that I know of.’
Jimmy, Sheila and I exchanged amused glances, then Auntie Jess snapped, ‘And another thing . . . she doesn’t like blue.’
Her three visitors were sore pressed not to burst out laughing, and Sheila still laughs about it to this day.
On another occasion some years later, we went shopping in Kirkcaldy. She was an avid shopper, and both Sheila and I were quite interested in having a look round although I couldn’t afford to buy anything. Jimmy, manlike of course, said he’d rather take Alan (our son, born in 1956) to the carnival he’d noticed as we came in on the bus. We arranged to meet up again at a café for a snack at a certain time.
Sheila and I were exhausted before that time came, but Auntie Jess was still ‘knyping’ on, as we say in the Doric (pronounced ‘k-nyping’). It means striding out doggedly, and I think it’s a good description. Alan would only have been about two or three, and he was so tired when we started to walk back to the bus station that Jimmy took him up on his shoulders, so that our progress was slower than it might otherwise have been.
‘Stop dawdling!’ his aunt ordered him. ‘If you don’t put a step in we’ll miss the bus.’
Sheila consulted the new watch we had given her for her birthday. ‘What time is the bus?’ she asked, innocently.
The elderly woman turned a scornful glare on her. ‘I’ve no idea, but I know we’ll miss it if he doesn’t hurry up.’
She couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘. . . your father.’ She never acknowledged my daughter as a Davidson, although we had to adopt her to change her surname. This is another incident that Sheila looks back on with amusement, including the little scenario when we did reach the row of glazed shelters, each with the bus destination on display at the front.
‘This is our bus,’ Auntie Jess declared loudly, making for the one marked ‘Leven’ which had quite a queue inside it already. ‘The sign’s wrong,’ she added, even louder still. ‘This is the bus for Rosyth, not Leven.’
The line of people looked at each other uncertainly. This woman sounded as if she knew what she was talking about, and some of them actually made a move to shift to another queue. One man, however, stood his ground, fixing Jess with eyes of steel. ‘If you’re going to Rosyth, you’d better stand somewhere else. I’m going to Leven and I’m staying here.’
The authority in his voice and manner got through to the doubters, who took up their stances again, looking accusingly at the troublemaker. Jimmy, Sheila and I had already moved along to look for the correct bus stop and, with an ‘I-know-you’re-wrong’, tutting, shake of her head, the old aunt followed us.
On another day out with her, a few years later still, we took the bus to Aberdour. The bus let us off at a shop selling pails, spades and beach balls at ridiculously low prices, so we bought one of each for Alan. We also bought a bottle of lemonade and a packet of biscuits. Our hostess didn’t think we would need anything to eat, because she had given us a cooked breakfast before we left. The trouble was, her sparse helpings were never enough for us. (I can remember us having to go out most nights around nine o’clock ostensibly for a breath of fresh air, but really to look for a chip shop.)
Thus provided, we set off on the fairly long walk from the main road to the sea. It was a lovely beach, but Jess padded along for what seemed miles looking for the best spot. Then we holidaymakers stripped down to the bare minimum of clothing, while she sat in a deck chair wearing, working from the top down, a close fitting felt hat, a thick woollen twinset with a shawl round her shoulders, a heavy tweed skirt, thick interlock directoire knickers (she always sat with her legs wide apart, that’s how I know) and woollen stockings. Her face was the only part of her uncovered.
The sun beat down on us all afternoon, we finished the lemonade and the biscuits (Jess didn’t partake of any), and although we had great fun, playing with the ball, paddling in the sea, making a big sandcastle, we three were glad when she said, around 6 p.m., ‘I think it’s time we went home.’
We picked up our rubbish and Jimmy deposited it in a nearby litter bin, laying the empty lemonade bottle carefully down the inside. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ his aunt demanded. ‘You must take that back to the shop.’
‘We won’t be
going near the shop,’ he said, though I could see he was itching to tell her to shut up. ‘There’s another path there, look.’
‘But you have to return that empty bottle,’ she persisted.
For the sake of peace, we trooped back along the sands to go up the way we’d come down, the bottle was returned to the shop and we finally got a bus after standing for over twenty minutes. By the time we reached Rosyth again, the sun had started to take its toll on us, and I popped into a chemist to buy something to soothe our scarlet, almost raw skins. We ate our salad tea to an accompanying lecture on the stupidity of going around half-naked. She wasn’t affected at all, not even her face.
In the morning, Alan came through to our room complaining that he could hardly walk, his legs were so sore. We told him it would soon go away, but when we tried to get up ourselves, we discovered that it wasn’t just surface sunburn we were suffering from, it felt as though it had burned deep into our bones.
We made it downstairs by going backwards, but Jess was scathing in her remarks about people with no guts.
She used to spend holidays with us, when we got our house, sometimes staying for three weeks without it crossing her mind that it took me all my time to feed the four of us, never mind an extra, finicky old woman. She did bring half a pound of expensive chocolates with her, handing the bag to Jimmy first, then to me, before taking one herself. When three-year-old Alan said, ‘Can I have one, please?’ she turned on him angrily.
‘These are far too expensive to give to children.’
I tackled Jimmy about this when we went to bed that night: ‘She could surely have taken a wee bag of dolly mixtures or something for the kids.’
He shrugged. ‘She was the same when I was a kid. Chocolates for the adults, but nothing for Minnie and me.’
I’m afraid my opinion of her at that time was ‘Selfish bitch’, an opinion that never really changed. I had better qualify that a little. I recently heard about a different side to her. When Jimmy’s nephew’s wife was learning shorthand and typing (she later became a school secretary), Auntie Jess read out passages from books to help her to gain speed. What is more, Adele says she was very patient and helpful, yet I can’t really imagine her having these qualities. They must have been well hidden under her thick layers of clothes.
Although I enjoyed working as cashier at Cordiner’s Garage, the Esplanade was rather a long way to travel four times a day, so I kept an eye on the Situations Vacant column in the evening paper. It wasn’t long until I saw that the SCWS was advertising for a cashier/book-keeper for McDonald’s Garage. It was much nearer home, only one short bus journey, so I applied straight away to the Area Manager, who was pleased that someone who knew the work would be taking over again.
Unfortunately, the manager had also changed, and the new man, who shall remain nameless, was a retired tea planter and knew little of office procedure. This was a mixed blessing, in a way, because I was left to my own devices – good – but I also found myself responsible for making sure that the mechanics’ work was being properly recorded, and that any complaints from customers were dealt with sympathetically – not so easy.
There were no other clerkesses, either – I never discovered why – and it was as it had been when I started there back in 1948. It was just this new man and me, and we got on reasonably well, although I think he did have a problem being taught his job by a much younger person, particularly a woman.
I’ll tell you of one day in particular, back in my first stint, and when I was also the only clerkess. Mr T. often came back from lunch in a foul temper, and I used to suspect that he’d had a row with his wife and was taking it out on me as the first one he came in contact with. I forget why he actually chastised me, but it was for something that was not my fault, and I was still seething with righteous indignation when I prepared his coffee – so indignant that something had to give.
When I carried through his cup and saucer, I banged them down on his table and snarled, ‘There’s your coffee and I hope it chokes you!’ I brought my little display of protest to a suitable conclusion by slamming the door as I went out.
There was absolute, deafening silence and I sat down with legs trembling. I’d done it now. I’d get the sack for sure, thrown out on my ear for speaking back. At last, after perhaps ten long minutes of guilty apprehension, I took a sip of my, by now, almost ice-cold coffee, and practically jumped out of my skin when Mr T. burst out of his office. He strode over to the counter and riffled through the taxi order book, not something he often did, before turning to face me. This was it! This was the pay-off! And I’d only myself to blame!
‘We’ll have to get something straight, Doris,’ he said, his face grave, his tone very, very serious. ‘There’s no room here for two people with tempers, so there’s nothing for it but . . . well, we’ll have to take it one at a time.’ Then he burst out laughing and apologised for his own behaviour.
That put us on a different footing, and it was shortly after that when he took on the second girl, Annie.
Back to the tasks I had to do when Mr X. was my boss. As you have no doubt noticed, wedding cars always have lovely white ribbons on the front, and someone has to keep them in pristine condition. Yes, I’d to take them home, wash and iron them and put them in a drawer until next time they were needed, which was fairly often. Most weddings took place on Saturdays, and we sometimes had more than one booking for the same day. We kept spare sets of ribbons for the occasions when times overlapped.
The charge at that time for both weddings and funerals was 12/6 an hour (twelve shillings and sixpence, or, in today’s funny money as I still consider it, sixty-two and a half pence). A full service to a private car cost fifteen shillings (seventy-five new pence). Of course, a weekly wage was around £4, so on that basis, a service cost about one sixteenth of a man’s average income. I’m not sure how that compares with the present time.
Less than six months after I returned to McDonald’s, I discovered that I was pregnant. Jimmy, of course, was delighted, and wanted me to stop working, but we needed to save for when we got a house of our own, and this job was perfect for camouflaging my condition. I stood behind a counter when people came in to pay bills or book a taxi, and I was dealing with petrol and oil sales through a hatch, so nobody actually saw the whole me, a whole that steadily grew larger and larger.
I was well into my pregnancy when I got quite a pleasant surprise. As a customer handed me the money for his petrol through the hatch, he said, ‘Don’t you recognise me, Doris?’
I hadn’t looked up, but when I did, he was smiling broadly. It was Bob W., one of the two mechanics who had gone to Australia around 1950. He opened the door from the garage and came into the office to have a chat. ‘I see you’re in the best of health,’ he grinned, looking at the bulge I was trying to hide with a smock.
‘You’re looking the picture of health yourself,’ I grinned back. He had put on a lot of weight in the six years since I’d wished him good luck in his new life.
‘Ah, well,’ he replied, brown eyes twinkling mischievously, ‘you’ve got me beat there, haven’t you? In a month or so you’ll have got rid of your excess baggage, but I’ll still be stuck with mine.’
We chatted companionably for a short time, learning that we had both married and were easy with each other as a consequence. He told me about his wife and two children and asked me about my husband (also a motor mechanic, remember), but we were constantly interrupted by customers wanting to pay for something. Why did they need to be buying petrol, or oil, or Upper Cylinder Lubricant? (This last had been a source of knowing winks and lewd jokes amongst the men at one time.) The phone was shrilling constantly, making a conversation really difficult to sustain, so Bob eventually took himself off, saying that he hoped everything went well with me. I was glad he’d come to see us, although the only other people he knew were two of the drivers and John Fraser, the garageman, a sort of general dogsbody, who served petrol, repaired punctures and stood in if we were s
hort of a driver.
Tall and upright, John was an enigma, an educated man whose entries in his timesheets included ‘To access and egress of cars . . .’ I hadn’t known that the opposite of access was egress, and I wondered how he knew. His manner of speech, quiet and grammatically correct, suggested that he’d held a position of importance at some time, but I never found out if that was so.
He was occasionally ordered to do something that he was reluctant to carry out, but he obeyed without question. I was actually involved in one such incident. My duties included working out how many miles each taxi got from a gallon of petrol (the number of miles done per week divided by the fuel consumed.) Rolls Royces generally averaged about ten to twelve mpg, so I was shocked to find that one car we had got only managed four one week. It was such a drop that I reported it to the manager. Poor John Fraser was instructed to make sure that the driver (let’s call him Bruce) was accurately recording the fuel he was putting into the tank of his vehicle.
It was almost six on the second evening, just as John was finishing for the day and Bruce was making his taxi ready for the night shift, that the scam was discovered. He was siphoning petrol out of the Rolls Royce into a large petrol tin, for use in his own car (or perhaps to sell without coupons at an excessive price.) I remember that he was fired there and then, but I can’t recall if the theft was reported to the police. I don’t think so, yet he was such a nice lad that John and I both felt really bad that we’d been the cause of him losing his job. If I hadn’t involved the boss, a warning from the garageman might have been enough. Oh well, I was only doing what I was paid to do, after all.
I worked on until my eighth month. For the last few weeks, I felt like a mother elephant, I was so huge . . . but I knew that living on one wage would mean struggling to survive, and I was putting it off as long as I could.
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