Gift from the Gallowgate

by Davidson, Doris;

Next day was our very first day of teaching practice, our assignment was every Friday for ten weeks, if I remember correctly . . . perhaps eight. Another girl and I had to go to the Girls’ High School, now Harlaw Academy with boys as well as girls. Aileen was scheduled for Primary Fives, and I was down for Primary Ones. I discovered this to be the worst age group for anyone in my delicate condition. I was bruised right down my back, and I ached – really ached – all over, and the little ones couldn’t speak to me without grabbing my hand or pulling at some other part of my body.

  It was agony, and I had to put up with it for the whole day. I kept hoping that the teacher would let me go home, she must have seen how shaken I was, but she didn’t. Worse still, it was January, snowing quite badly and freezing cold, but students were not allowed in the staff room. Aileen and I had to monitor the little ones at playtime, and then rush in to have a cup of coffee when the teachers went back to their own rooms.

  We had to go out at lunchtime, so we took the bus back to the College to have something to eat. All the girls commented on how ill I looked and advised me to go home, but I was afraid it would be a black mark against me if I did, so I went back in the bus with Aileen. It was the very last half hour in the afternoon before I was told to give my lesson, by which time I was almost crawling on my hands and knees, my back was so sore.

  It took me some weeks to recover but, by my last day at the High, when my tutor came to hear me giving a lesson, I was at least feeling something like normal. I had written a story about wild animals, preparing a strip of paper painted to represent the jungle, with slots to put in a picture of each animal as it came into the tale – stuck to a spill to steady it – all quite technical. I had given a lot of thought to the story, and to the names for the beasts. Some were easy – Leo the lion, Sammy the snake, Mickey the monkey, and so on, but I just couldn’t think what to call the hippopotamus. Keeping to my idea of the name beginning with the same letter, I eventually plumped for Hilda, the hippo.

  Miss D. seemed satisfied with what I did, and how the little girls reacted to me, although it was difficult to judge what she thought, but I went home quite pleased with my first attempt at teaching on trial.

  On the Monday, however, back in college, I was somewhat apprehensive when Miss D. gave us her actual opinion of our efforts – the dreaded criticism. She didn’t hold back, praising some and slating some, and I hoped that she wouldn’t take too long to put me out of my misery. She was actually taking us in the order of her visits, so I was last. She looked at me balefully, and I wondered what I had done wrong.

  ‘I didn’t care much for your choice of names, Doris,’ she said – she was the only one of all the lecturers and students to use my Christian name – the words dripping with . . . antagonism?

  I couldn’t understand, and must have shown my bewilderment, for she went on, ‘Why did you call your hippopotamus Hilda?’

  ‘I thought it sounded right,’ I ventured. ‘Hilda, the hippo.’

  ‘And you honestly didn’t know that my name is Hilda?’

  I’m sure my chin must have dropped, but unfortunately, it suddenly struck me as very funny and I couldn’t help laughing . . . not just ordinary laughter, though. With the release of the tension at having to wait so long for this devastating report, I was almost hysterical – knowing it was the wrong thing to do, but powerless to stop.

  It dawned on me that the others were sitting silently, waiting, I suppose, for an explosion, but wonder of wonders, Miss D.’s mouth was lifting in a smile. Not a very big smile, but at least it was no longer down at the edges.

  On another teaching practice, I had two ‘crits’ in the same day. First thing in the morning, the English lecturer came to Victoria Road School to see how I was progressing with my Primary Seven class, and last thing in the afternoon, the Physical Education teacher was coming to watch me taking them for gym.

  I had heard that the children knew exactly what was going on in these situations, that the student was on trial, and they generally came out on her (or his) side, but I might not have believed this if I hadn’t experienced it myself. My first ‘crit’ went off quite well, the kids were like little angels, striving to answer the questions I asked, but because I still had the gym lesson to take, I was a bundle of nerves for the rest of the forenoon. This did not escape one girl.

  ‘Dinna worry, Mrs Davidson,’ she whispered as she went out at lunchtime. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  I wasn’t fine, though. My stomach was churning, I’d a touch of diarrhoea and I wished I could go home. The PE tutor came into the gym at three, shook my hand and then sat down beside a girl who had some problem with her back and couldn’t participate. I had planned my lesson carefully; I can’t recall anything now except the faux pas I made. I had split them into groups and one group had to take a rubber mat out of the cupboard for what they had to do. I could see that they were struggling to get one out of the jumbled pile in the confined space, so I went to help them. Unfortunately, I accidentally stood on the corner of a mat as the two big boys gave it a tug. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I had fallen to the floor gracefully, but I staggered a few times with my arms flailing, trying to keep my feet and then collapsed in an ungainly heap.

  I was afraid to look at the tutor, and she said nothing as she went to talk to the headmaster later (presumably giving him a laughing account of the stupid mature student he had been harbouring) but when we went back to the classroom, the girl who had also been watching sidled up to me. ‘You ken the time you fell? Well, that woman wrote something doon in her book. I couldna see what it was, but will you get a row for it?’

  My sense of humour came to my aid. ‘Likely,’ I giggled, ‘but I think everything else went smoothly enough.’

  ‘Aye, but if you’d left the loons to tak’ the mat oot theirsel’s, you wouldna of fell, would of you?’

  And that was exactly what the tutor said back at college, in better English, and I got a long lecture on letting the children do things for themselves. She had nothing else derogatory to say about me, however, and I was given a ‘C’.

  Then came another kind of test, teaching in pairs, although I don’t know what this was meant to prove. Anyway, Lillias and I were placed together in one of the only two Roman Catholic primary schools in Aberdeen. We were told not to go in until half past nine because they had a religious service for the first half-hour. That suited us very well, and we were even more pleased when we saw the class we would be having. We were to be two weeks there alongside the teacher, and two weeks without her, and there were only – would you believe – nine children. Three each for the first two weeks. Not only that, we also got off early in the afternoons, because they had another, shorter, service before they went home.

  A little diversion here. Around this time, I decided that I’d like to learn to drive, after all. (You may recall my aborted attempt almost twenty years earlier, when I worked in the garage.) I may say here, categorically, that it’s not a good idea to ask your husband to give you driving lessons.

  Jimmy had taught my sister to drive, and one day, when he’d jumped down my throat several times for doing stupid things, I said, ‘Bertha always said you were really patient with her, so why are you raving at me?’

  He heaved a deep sigh. ‘She learned in her own car. You’re playing merry hell with mine, that’s the difference.’

  On another occasion, I was driving down a fairly long hill and getting more and more annoyed at the things he was saying, so I eventually slammed on the brakes, shouted, ‘Drive the bloody car yourself, then,’ and jumped out.

  He talked me back in, of course, but I’d had enough. I didn’t have far to look for professional tuition. Lillias’s father ran a driving school. He was the best person I could have chosen; no mealy-mouthed obeisance, just outright, honest criticism. And I do mean criticism.

  I was so nervous that he gave me a slap on the leg one day. Another time, when I asked if he had anybody else as nervous as I was, he snapped, ‘There�
�s nobody else in this world as nervous as you.’ But his eyes were twinkling and I knew he didn’t mean it. Um . . . I think. I was more nervous than ever when he told me to apply for my test, and wonder of wonders, I passed first time.

  I had another Primary One class at one point – at Drumgarth School, now no longer. Most of the children were very well behaved, but there was one little monster . . . to put it mildly. He swore (at five years old), he refused to do any work, he wouldn’t sit down when he was told and he wouldn’t stop shouting if he felt like it, his voice deep and penetrating. This was fairly early in my student days and I was petrified of being left alone with him, even for the half-hour each day I was allowed. At those times, the teacher herself took him with her, to the staffroom or wherever she went. I will call this boy John Wallace, a beautiful, blue-eyed boy with fair curly hair, looking like an angel but actually the devil incarnate. Keep him in mind; he features drastically in my life in a few years.

  We had to take a turn at teaching in a rural school, and although I was by then licensed to drive, I wasn’t looking forward to an early start in the morning. I could be sent anywhere in Aberdeenshire. As it happened, I had to go to Kingswells School, a matter of ten minutes on the bus (door to door) from where we now lived. We had moved to Hazlehead in 1966, but I’ll get round to that in the next chapter.

  Rural schools often had two age groups in the same class, and I was delegated to Primaries one and two, to start in the first week of 1967. On Hogmanay, I couldn’t breathe properly because of some obstruction in my nose and when the doctor examined me on the second of January, he said I had polyps that would have to be removed. But I would have to wait some time for the operation.

  I went to Kingswells, therefore, speaking as if I had a bad head cold. ‘I’b sorry, girls ad boys, but there is subthig wrog with by dose.’ That was what I said to them, and they were all suitably impressed. I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d been in a school in town, but these dear lambs looked after me like nursemaids.

  I think it was into May before I had the operation – a horrible messy business that left me feeling constantly dizzy. Our graduation was in June, and I was nothing like recovered. Then came the day we were interviewed for teaching posts. I hadn’t been able to wash my hair for weeks, or let anyone wash it for me, so on my way to the Education Offices in Broad Street, I went into Esslemont and MacIntosh (Aberdeen’s most prestigious store, and with a bus stop at its entrance) and bought a hat. It cost over £1 – a lot for me then – and I don’t think I ever wore it again.

  We were informed by letter which schools would be expecting us at the end of the holidays, and the girls of 3K Section were to be scattered all over Britain, apart from Morag, who was being sent on VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) to Timbuktu, more a pie-in-the-sky than a real place to most of us. A few years later she was sent to Papua New Guinea, where she met her future husband, an Australian. Catherine, fond of sports, was delighted to be sent to Coylumbridge, with Aviemore a kick-in-the-behind away, where she could ski to her heart’s content. She is now in Glasgow teaching English as a second language.

  Lillias, my constant companion, was married soon after we graduated. Her husband taught at the London School of Economics, so they lived in the capital for many years, until Ted was given the honour of a chair at Cardiff University. We see them at least once every year, as I’ve mentioned before. Of the others, I’m not too sure where they are. One, who must have tired of teaching, or perhaps didn’t agree with the way the Government was changing education (ruining it?), left to train as a chiropodist, and still works in Aberdeen as far as I know. Another is now a Head Teacher, most probably thinking of retiring now, if she has not already done so.

  I was told that I would be at Smithfield Primary School, and had the long school holidays to worry about how I would get on there. I missed the stir of the College, I missed having to study but most of all I missed the twenty-two friends I had made. Life in a school just wouldn’t be the same.

  18

  A little back- and side-tracking here, and perhaps some repetition, to explain. I had been a member of the Church of Scotland at Craigiebuckler since I was fifteen or sixteen, mainly because the old minister had retired and his replacement was a gorgeous bachelor. Betty and I had been too old then for the ordinary Sunday School that went in at the same time as the kirk and meant that the children trooped in to join their parents in the church itself during the service, so we joined the Bible Class. This met in the afternoon, and was taken by the handsome young Reverend himself, not a selection of young and old (mostly old) Sunday school teachers.

  The membership had soared from what it used to be – quite a lot of other girls besides us had developed a crush on the unmarried, available, young minister – strangely, although I can picture him still, I can’t recall his name. With such a large number of us hanging on to his every word, he must have thought that he was a phenomenal success as a preacher, and when a class was started for the Young Communicants, we, like the rest of them, joined that, too. This resulted in us going to the church morning, afternoon and evening . . . just to see our ‘heartthrob’. There were other compensations, of course. Boys as well as girls attended these classes, and two very presentable young lads usually escorted Betty and me back to Ord Street – halfway to our own homes – where my granny gave us something to eat after our mammoth sessions of religion. Our hearts, pining for our hero, were lifted considerably by their attentions. It was good to be young!

  Then calamity! The war came, and we lost our film-star mentor to the army. His replacement was much older, not so good-looking or so much fun, therefore attendances dropped. The Young Communicants were sworn into the Church as members and had to force themselves to go to church every Sunday – well, Betty and I had to. For one thing, our parents were there to keep an eye on us, and the boys kept away from them.

  Craigiebuckler had originally been a small country kirk, and although some houses had been built a little way off in the twenties and thirties, it still had this aura of ‘ruralness’, my own word. The huge organ was very impressive with its various-sized pipes behind it, and the beadle (verger in English, I believe) had to pump up the bellows before it would make a sound. This, of course, was made unnecessary when the organ was connected to electricity in the fifties, I think.

  Each kirk member had his or her own pew, paid for yearly, with a card at the end of each row detailing the names of the people who had the right to sit there. Some pews had a cushion (ours hadn’t) and I suppose this luxury had also to be paid for. Nothing for nothing in those days, either.

  There was one rigid rule in Craigiebuckler, though; a reminder of what used to happen in days of yore. The head (doyen) of the family who lived in the largest house in the area was looked on in much the same way as the original laird of the land must have been looked upon, with great reverence and awe. Everyone had to be seated and the kirk doors closed by the beadle and opened again before Mrs F. came in, followed by her sons and daughters. A widow since perhaps the Boer War, she was always dressed in black, and looked neither left nor right as she led her entourage slowly up the aisle.

  Her pew was practically under the pulpit, and I’m sure every incumbent over the decades had been conscious of her steely eyes on him as he gave his sermon. When the organist played the introduction for each hymn, psalm or paraphrase, there was a rustling of her skirts and some fairly laboured breathing until she got to her feet, always last. At the close of the service, she and her attendants were first to go, a ritual par excellence, while we minions waited until they were outside before making any move.

  When we were smaller, Betty and I used to watch the performance with great interest, our mouths gaping as the participants swept past, until our mothers tapped our feet with theirs to remind us of our manners.

  Alas, Craigiebuckler is now surrounded by so many villas, bungalows and manor-type houses, even a library and, until just a few years ago, an Infant School, so that
it can no longer lay claim to being a country kirk, where one family more or less ruled the roost over the commoners who outnumbered them.

  After we moved to our new home in Mastrick in 1956, of course, going to Craigiebuckler was out of the question. We’d have had to take two buses, into town and out again (which we couldn’t afford) or go by Shanks’ pony – a bit too far across country, so to speak. Besides, we had a baby to think of, as well. The best thing for me to do was to join Mastrick Church. It had been planned along with the housing – this was a large estate to start with and expanded over the years – and by the time we arrived in the parish the first year or more of services were held in what had become the church hall at the rear of the building.

  Liking the feeling of being welcomed by the congregation, I removed my ‘lines’ from Craigiebuckler and became a member of Mastrick Parish Church. It had nothing to do with the fact that here was another young, handsome minister. I was married, he was married, so there was no ulterior motive for my attendance there. My mother also changed from Craigiebuckler, because she could get a bus from door to door. Bertha and Jimmy decided to become members as well, but they had to attend a Young Communicants’ class first, which, because all the others were in their teens or twenties, made my husband feel conspicuous. He would have stopped going if I had let him.

  This was a new church, of course, not quite a five-minute walk from us, and what came as a vast surprise to all concerned was the number of children who wanted to come to Sunday School – over a thousand when I typed out a Cradle Roll. I was the only member who had a typewriter – an old, rattly Olivetti that sometimes missed half a letter, but I managed . . . over a good period of time.

  Eventually, it was arranged that two lots of each age group would be catered for, the problem being finding enough volunteer teachers and leaders, plus a superintendent to make sure that everything was being handled properly. I’m pleased to say that our family was well to the fore. Bertha and Bill were roped in as leaders, Bertha for one lot of fives to sevens, Bill for one lot of teenagers. I played the piano for Bertha’s classes (there were about seven little groups) and Sheila and another young girl volunteered as teachers, though they were only in their teens themselves, plus a few older girls. In time, Alan became a pupil.