Voices in the Street

by Maureen Reynolds

  We didn’t say anything but an ice lolly wasn’t a novelty to us. After all, we had bought one from Dellanzo’s ice-cream shop a few weeks earlier. George and I hadn’t been too impressed with it because one long suck removed all the red syrup, leaving behind a white, anaemic-looking carcass of ice. Carolyn soon pulled four ice lollies from the container like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat. As we sucked them outside in the garden my first impression of this new confection was confirmed. Like the ones from Dellanzo’s, one suck of these lollies left us with a lump of totally tasteless ice.

  We loved visiting this prefab with its homely air and wonderful smell of cooking that always emerged from the kitchen, not to mention the added attractions of the Girl’s Crystal annuals and the Film Fun comics. We never paid a visit to Auntie Nora’s house without getting a super meal and although there must have been times when she could have gladly seen the back of us she never showed it. Just like Auntie Evelyn. As we all squeezed round the drop-down table, eating beans and chips, I often thought that paradise must be like this wonderful, funny-shaped house.

  Back on the street, the newlyweds moved into their single-roomed flat. The previous tenant had left it clean enough but her tastes had run to dark, sombre paintwork and dismally dingy wallpaper. The young couple were no sooner in residence than they set to work with a tin of cream gloss paint for the woodwork and a sunshiny yellow distemper for the walls. The small room was instantly transformed into a bright and airy place and once the dining suite and the two Rexene armchairs had been installed from Henderson’s furniture store on the Wellgate the effect was stunning and grand.

  Mum and Lizzie admired their handiwork while Margaret pointed out the difference a coat of paint could make. ‘Do you mind how dark it used to be in here? You wouldn’t think it’s the same house.’ She tried to sound modest but failed.

  Mum agreed. ‘Eh’ve just come from my brother’s new pre-fab and everything is brand new and clean looking. It fair makes me fed up with my house.’

  Our own flat seemed suddenly dark, with its old-fashioned furniture that had originally belonged to Grandad. Very soon after our visit to the new flat, Mum, Lizzie and Mrs Doyle decided to splash out on some home decorating.

  ‘Where did Margaret say she bought the paint?’ Mrs Doyle asked Lizzie.

  ‘It was some shop in the Overgate but Eh can’t mind its name,’ replied Lizzie, trying to remember, ‘Eh think it was near Franchi’s tearooms.’

  At the end of the week, after they got their pay, Mum and Lizzie bought a tin of distemper each and we set to work on the Saturday afternoon. Mrs Doyle had already finished her kitchen a few days’ earlier and it seemed as if the entire street was determined to emulate the newlyweds. Mum rolled up her sleeves with a vengeance before dipping the large unwieldy brush into the cream-coloured distemper and slapping it over the uneven walls of our kitchen.

  Mrs Doyle, who was a dab hand at everything, stood in the middle of the floor directing operations. ‘You’ve missed a wee bit in that far corner, Molly,’ she pointed out.

  Mum was doing a balancing act on a kitchen chair and she reached over and poked the brush viciously into the offending corner. When all the walls were finished we stood in the same vantage point as Mrs Doyle and Mum surveyed her handiwork. It was clear she didn’t like it very much.

  ‘Do you no think it looks awfy cold?’ she asked doubtfully.

  Mrs Doyle shook her head emphatically. ‘No, Eh don’t. It’s just because it’s new. Wait till the smoke from the fire makes it brown again.’

  However, Mum seemed undecided about the new colour scheme. ‘Eh think the walls look awfy bare somehow.’

  Mrs Doyle had the answer. ‘Eh stippled mine with a wee bit of colour. Eh’ve got some blue paint left over. Just wait till Eh get it.’

  She darted through the door and clattered noisily down the stairs. Within a few minutes she was back, a small tin in one hand and a bunched-up piece of cloth in the other. She began to dab blue patches over the sickly cream expanse.

  ‘Just dab it like this,’ she demonstrated, making sure we got the hang of it. ‘Eh was really lucky tae get this wee tin of blue paint.’

  After she had departed to make the tea for her large family the three of us went wild with our small bits of rag. Soon the walls had the appearance of being splattered by an army of kamikaze pigeons. Mum was still unhappy about this new painted effect but it was now a fait accompli and there was nothing she could do about it. As she prepared to make the tea she shrugged.

  ‘Och well, maybe we’ll get used tae it. And as Mrs Doyle says, it’ll no stay this clean colour for long. The smoke from the chimney will soon turn it brown.’

  She sounded optimistic.

  CHAPTER 14

  The country was in the throes of change and our street was in a state of excitement. In October 1948, Nye Bevan brought his wonderful National Health Service into all our lives. At a stroke, the worry about the cost of being ill was removed from the working classes and the poor.

  The women gathered on the pavement and discussed this latest bit of news. Cissy Murray, who lived in the last close at the far end of the street, was the main spokeswoman on the subject. This was mainly because, although she didn’t realise it, her husband Will was the street’s hypochondriac as well as being bone lazy. Poor Cissy, with her round dumpling face and thick spectacles which must have been rose-tinted when she married her husband, had but one aim in life – to look after Will. According to her, he had a chest condition and this seemingly made him incapable of switching on the wireless let alone doing a job of work.

  Mrs Doyle used to be annoyed by this. ‘She runs after him too much,’ she claimed. ‘She even lights his fags for him! Eh blame it on her no having any bairns. Believe me, if she had a half dozen kids running around her feet she wouldn’t have time to buzz around a big healthy man.’

  ‘Aye but that doesn’t stop him haring off to Watery Willie’s every night for his pint,’ said Lizzie, who was also perplexed by Cissy’s meek behaviour. ‘Eh mean, Eh’m no a nosy person but Eh can’t help but see him from my window when Eh’m washing my dishes.’

  The clutch of women agreed with her. None of the women in the street had a great or easy life but, compared to Cissy, they were well off. They all felt sorry for this poor, put-upon woman whose face wobbled like a blancmange every time she shook her head. Cissy had a penchant for gingham and most of her wardrobe seemed to consist of garments made in this checked fabric. It also, according to the street grapevine, was very much in evidence in her house.

  ‘She must have bought a whole roll of it before the war. She’s got it made up in her blouses and pinnies as well as her bedcover, curtains and tablecloth,’ said one sage who seemed to know the house’s contents by heart.

  Cissy was a woman of many words, never believing in brevity if she could help it. She much preferred a hundred-word statement when half a dozen would have been sufficient. What I liked about her was her wonderful way of mixing up words. I had never heard of Sheridan’s work, but I know now that Cissy was a dead ringer for Mrs Malaprop. As she stood in the midst of the women, discussing Nye Bevan and the free health service, she remarked, ‘Will has tae watch he doesn’t catch bronchitis because his chest gets all congenital. Still, we don’t need to worry now. Eh can call the doctor out without having to run down tae Dickson’s pawnshop to hock my wedding ring for the five-bob doctor’s fee.’

  Everyone was of one mind. It was certainly a wonderful scheme. The women’s faces were still pale and weary because Mr Strachey had lowered everyone’s hopes for an end to rationing. But at least our healthcare was now assured, thanks to the visionary genius of Mr Bevan. After all, didn’t we all know about the terrible death toll from tuberculosis, that awful sword of Damocles that hung over entire families in the overcrowded tenements?

  Then there was Minnie. She suffered from chronic asthma and was forever being found gasping for breath on the strip of drying green at 108 Hilltown. During
a really bad turn she would send for the doctor but her medicine was usually purchased from the chemist under her own diagnostic instructions. I remember how shocked I had been on a rare visit to her damp and dismal single room when I saw her bedside cabinet almost covered by a huge assortment of medicines.

  Now the general consensus was that the sun had set on these bad conditions. We were urged to sign on with a doctor of our choice and Mum had no hesitation. After work one evening we were going to sign on with Doctor Jacob’s panel. Before the new legislation he had consulted from his home in Nelson Street but in anticipation of an influx of new patients he had opened a surgery in Victoria Road. The premises had been a shop in a previous life but now the big display window was covered with a net curtain to screen his patients from the curious and prying eyes of passing pedestrians.

  The medium-sized, square room was spotlessly clean and had rows of pale varnished chairs around the four walls. The floor was covered with the ever-popular and highly polished dark-green linoleum, the same as in the Royal Infirmary and Duncarse Home. When I saw it I wondered if this lino had perhaps been bought, like Cissy’s gingham, before the war. Had it been bought in bulk by the Medical Association? There was that antiseptic aroma in the room as well, a mixture of Dettol and carbolic soap, and on this particular night there was also the smell of people.

  By the time we arrived the place was already crowded with a good cross-section of Homo sapiens, from the old and infirm to the young couples with a brood of runny-nosed, wet-eyed children. All were eagerly waiting to sign on the panel and receive their free health care. We took our seats between an old man with a deep, hacking cough and a weary-eyed mother with a crying and fractious baby who, judging from his howls, needed either his bottle or his bed. Mum whispered quietly, ‘Eh hope we’re no going tae be here all night. Eh’ve never seen such a crowd in one room before.’

  George played with his Dinky car, running it up and down his arm and making ‘Vroom! Vroom!’ noises. I had no Dinky car to play with so I contented myself by studying my fellow patients. It was a strange situation because, although we all faced one another across the small room, no one looked directly at anyone else, preferring to keep their eyes firmly on the floor or on some distant spot above our heads. As I gazed around the room some people shuffled slightly under my intense stare, turning their bodies away with an impatient fidget.

  Mum noticed this and gave me a hard dunt with her elbow. ‘Will you stop staring at folk? Eh don’t know how many times Eh’ve had to warn you about this. Folk don’t like to be stared at.’

  Because she sounded cross I decided to transfer my attention to the various posters that decorated the walls. ‘Do not tell the doctor his job. He will prescribe what he thinks you should have,’ said one epistle, no doubt aimed at the army of well-meaning but tactless people who had been used to years of self-prescribing and considered themselves diagnostic experts. How Grandad would have hated a doctor lecturing him about his weird and wonderful home-made cures.

  ‘Do not ask for aspirins, cotton wool, etc,’ stated another poster bluntly. Obviously now that everything was free some greedy people were hoping to stock up their medicine cabinets overnight.

  As the minutes ticked by, one of the toddlers began to cry noisily and this high-pitched howl echoed around the room. The harassed mother tried to pacify him by sticking a gigantic dummy in his mouth but this failed to stem his outburst. A couple of hefty-looking workmen, still dressed in checked shirts and cement-grimed dungarees, glanced impatiently towards the surgery door before resuming their scrutiny of the evening papers, turning the pages with rough, callused hands.

  Then Big Bella burst in through the door. She stood in amazement. ‘Good grief! What a crowd!’ she exclaimed as her glance swept around the room.

  She spotted us sitting quietly and came over to squeeze into George’s seat while he sat on the floor. ‘Eh’ve got this awfy pain in my belly,’ she said, holding her hand over her abdomen and indicating the source of pain to all and sundry, ‘so Eh just said to myself, “Bella, you have to sign on with the doctor, so go along and do it and, while you’re there, let him have a wee keek at your belly”.’

  She suddenly turned to Mum. ‘What are you lot here for?’

  Mum, who would sooner have died than let the entire waiting room know of any ailment, whispered her reply. ‘We’re down to join the panel but, if the queue doesn’t move soon, Eh’ll come back another night.’

  Bella gave a deep sigh and surveyed everyone in the room. For one terrible moment Mum thought she was about to ask them for their symptoms but she merely called out in a loud voice, ‘How long have you been waiting?’

  ‘About quarter of an hour but nobody has moved in or out,’ said Mum.

  Bella looked at her with amazement. ‘Are you sure the doctor’s in there?’ she bellowed.

  A suppressed ripple of laughter came from the two workmen.

  ‘Well, all Eh can say is this – whoever is with the doctor must be at death’s door.’

  This statement brought another wave of laughter and amused looks before the door opened suddenly, almost as if the unfortunate patient had overheard Bella, and the doctor poked his head around the door. ‘Next please!’ he called out, looking calm and composed in the face of the large crowd.

  ‘Well, now that he’s seen this crowd maybe he’ll get a move on,’ said Bella, with a satisfied smile.

  This prediction was true because the room quickly emptied. Soon we found ourselves in the consulting room. This small room looked on to a dingy grey pend which made it dark even with the light on. The dimness wasn’t helped by the enormous dark roll-top desk which dominated the space and almost dwarfed the doctor. Undaunted by this desk, the doctor sat and looked at the three of us. Mum explained her reason for the visit and he painstakingly wrote out all our names while still managing to talk in his usual staccato fashion. ‘Now, if you are ill, this is my surgery timetable. Every evening from four o’clock till seven o’clock. Except for Sunday.’

  When he was satisfied that we had ingested this information he rolled down the top of his glorious desk and saw us to the door. It was almost seven o’clock when we emerged into the dark street and there were still about another six patients to see, including Bella and her sore belly.

  ‘Eh don’t know when he’ll get home for his tea,’ said Mum, who was dreading the climb up the steep hill and the chore of making our own tea.

  Later that evening, Lizzie and Margaret were relating their own experiences of joining Doctor Nelson’s panel. ‘It was bedlam! By the time we arrived, there must have been forty folk waiting,’ sighed Lizzie, plunking herself down with a cup of tea from Mum’s endless supply.

  ‘It was the same at Doctor Jacob’s surgery,’ said Mum, ‘although Eh don’t know how many folk were there.’

  ‘Forty-seven,’ I told them proudly, ‘Eh counted them.’

  Mum gave me a look that said no medals would be forthcoming. ‘Aye, you would,’ she stated sourly.

  As the weeks went by, the health service continued to be the main topic of gossip in the street, especially with Cissy, who folded her ample arms across her gingham-clad bosom and regaled all and sundry with a catalogue of Will’s recent trials. ‘He took this awfy pain in his chest and the doctor was really worried about him but what a red face Eh got when he gave this loud coarse-sounding burp and it was only indignation he had.’

  Poor Cissy seemed peeved by the trivial nature of the illness, more so because of the promising initial symptoms. She was still sounding off. ‘Another thing Eh’ve heard is that there’s queues for free teeth and specs so Eh said tae Will maybe he better get seen for his specs and set of falsers.’ It would seem that Cissy knew the health service inside out.

  The women looked askance at her, no doubt wondering how Cissy could prise Will free from his chair in order to get his teeth out.

  Mrs Doyle had heard another piece of disturbing news. ‘Eh’ve heard that folk are coming back on ho
liday from Canada and Australia just looking for free teeth and specs.’

  The women were angry at this news and shook their heads. ‘Bloody cheek!’ said Mrs Farquhar. ‘It’s our health service and it’s no for the likes of them who scooted away from the poverty gey quick. What Eh say is this, if they’ve got money to jaunt back here from Canada, then they can pay for their own teeth and specs.’

  Cissy, who was becoming slightly miffed now that the subject had moved on to the brass-necked emigrants, butted in, ‘Well, that may be the case but, when the doctor came out to see Will, he had this muckle black bag that was full of everything under the sun. What a job he had tae put his hand on what he was looking for! So Eh told him, “You’ve too many departments in your bag, Doctor. You’ll have to get something smaller!”.’

  As the women laughed at her innocent words, Will’s voice bellowed from the open window, ‘Ciiisssyyyyy!’

  She unfolded her arms and looked flustered. ‘Och, for heaven’s sake! What does he want now?’ she cried, scuttling across the road.

  After a few minutes she reappeared. ‘Will just wanted me to switch on the wireless. Said he felt a construction in his chest. Eh’ve told him tae take the two sets of tablets the doctor left that didn’t cost us a tosser but does he thump?’

  After she left to make Will his afternoon cup of tea, one of the women passed a comment, ‘Take his tablets? Eh’d take the toe of my boot and gie him a hard kick up his erse.’

  This caused great amusement among the women who all agreed with the idea.

  We seemed to be living in exciting times. The street was finally moving into the twentieth century and benefiting from some of its new technology. Electricity was being introduced to the houses but only if the tenants were willing to pay the connection charge. The street was divided in its opinions. Mum was doubtful but only because of the cost. The papers had reported the story of a prefab tenant who had received a bill for the staggering sum of £19.9s.9d which had sent shock waves through the street. Mrs Farquhar didn’t want it and Mum was of the same opinion but Lizzie tried to persuade her. ‘Just think how labour-saving it’ll be. No more hunting for mantles that only last five minutes. You’ll just have tae switch it on and “Hey Presto!” instant light.’