The day stretched into night and it got hotter and hotter. Ally arrived in the evening but was only allowed a few minutes to visit, the rule of husbands being present at the birth being still a thousand light years in the future. I was left alone with my thoughts and the gas and air machine, which I was seemingly using wrongly. I had somehow managed to make myself semi-conscious – a state that annoyed the night nurse.
‘No, no, you’re using it all wrong! You just put the mask on your face when you feel a pain coming on. You don’t leave it on all the time.’
I felt like telling her to go raffle herself but I was too stupefied because of the gas. Then after hours and hours that seemed like a lifetime and after hearing countless other babies being born, it was all over – albeit with forceps.
Meanwhile, Mum, who could never get the hang of a public phone, never mastering the intricacies of button A and button B, got Norah, one of her workmates, to phone for her. She received the news that a son had been delivered, if not by divine angels then by the divine help of the gas and air machine.
‘Oh, thank goodness it’s all over!’ said Mum. ‘Especially on the hottest night of the year.’
Ally arrived early in the morning, straight from his work, but I could barely keep my eyes open. The baby, named Alick after his father and grandfather, had weighed in at a massive nine pounds ten ounces, making him the heaviest baby in a ward full of tiny babies. In fact, the woman in the next bed pretended to become quite shirty when her little four-pound son was brought to her. ‘Nurse, will you keep that big laddie out of sight when my wee lad gets brought in!’
A week later we went home. Ally had baked a cake with pink and blue icing – blue for the baby and pink because it was my twenty-first birthday.
Every morning, after the nappies were washed and hung out to dry in the downstairs courtyard, I would put the baby in his pram and we would set off on our adventures around the town. Strangers and friends would stop and peer into the pram, remarking what a wonderful baby he was. I had to agree.
By coincidence, Violet and Margaret, my old dancing chums, had also had a son each and we would meet up with our prams and exchange notes about our little geniuses’ habits. Mostly, however, I liked to go to see Mum every lunchtime, picking up her shopping on the way up the steep incline of the Hilltown, then staying for a quick snack with her before she went back to work. Then I did a quick hour of housework for her, as she wasn’t that long out of Ashludie, before setting off back to my own house, holding on tight to the pram as we headed back down the hill.
One day Mum mentioned an old friend. ‘Do you mind Katie who married and went off to Kuala Lumpur? Eh’ve often wondered how she was.’
How could I ever forget the wedding, the film-star looks of Ricky and the meal at the Val D’Or restaurant?
‘It’s just that Eh saw her the other day but she wasn’t with Ricky. She was with this wee lad. But maybe it wasn’t Katie,’ said Mum, shaking her head.
But it had been Katie and we bumped into her on the Hilltown the following week. ‘Eh was going to come up and see you, Molly,’ she said, while a small man stood beside her. ‘This is Gerry.’
Gerry said a cheerful hello and Mum gave Katie a look as if to say, where is Ricky? Katie got the message and said, ‘Eh don’t live in Kuala Lumpur now. Eh got a divorce from Ricky. It was the jungle that got me – nothing to do week in or week out and nothing but heat and bushes and bugs and strange animals. Gerry and me have got a house in Lochee Road.’ She gazed at the man with a tender, motherly look that I had never seen on her face before.
Mum was looking at Gerry and she said, ‘Eh hope you don’t think Eh’m cheeky but you’re awfy like a lad called Jeemie that used to be a bookie’s runner around the Hilltown years ago.’
Gerry’s face brightened. ‘Aye, that’s my brother. He works in a bookie’s shop now. Eh’ve never liked the horses but Jeemie loved them. Eh’m an electrician.’
As they set off arm in arm down the Hilltown, Mum remarked, ‘Eh wonder how long that will last.’
I didn’t say anything but, judging from the motherly look she gave her new love, I thought perhaps it would last a lot longer than her previous marriage.
One person I did feel sorry for was Mrs Miller. She would pop into Mum’s house every lunchtime and she loved holding the baby.
‘You know, you’re really lucky to have such a healthy son. Poor Betty never looked like this, God rest her soul.’
‘I know, Mrs Miller. I often wish Betty was still here. What a lot has happened over the past ten years!’ I said sadly.
With the decade fast drawing to a close, I recalled how eventful it had been. Aggie’s daughter had given birth to a girl and the proud grandparents were now in California. No doubt Mum would see the clutch of photos at a later date and hear the detailed description of Aggie’s now-extended family.
As for our family, it had been a decade of ups and downs, happiness and sadness, meetings and partings, illness and recovery. And although there had been death, there was also life – life in the shape of the four-month-old baby who was now asleep in his pram.
PLATE SECTION
Grandad Dwyer and Uncle Charlie, c. 1919
My mother, Molly, with her brother Charlie, c. 1920
My father (middle row far left), grandfather (middle row far right) and other members of the Scottish Painters’ Society, c. 1938
Grandad Dwyer, c. 1940. He served in the Black Watch during World War I and was medically discharged in 1941
Molly, c. 1930
Auntie Evelyn and Uncle Jack’s wedding, 10 September 1942. My dad, pictured seated, was their best man
This is me pictured in 1939
And here I am again about a year later
In this one, I’m about three
This is George and me at Rosebank Primary School in 1947
This snap of Mum and me was taken in 1958 at Ashludie Hospital
Here are Mum and George on the day of my cousin Eleanor’s wedding in the 1960s
This picture of my parents-in-law, Peggy and Alick Reynolds, with Ally was taken c. 1955
And here are Peggy and Alick again. This time they were snapped at Kinloch Rannoch in the mid sixties
On the left here is my father-in-law in 1922. Before joining the police in Dundee, Alick drove Rolls Royces for the Dunira Estate, Comrie
Mum (second from the right) at work in DPM Dairy. In the middle of the picture is Mum’s great friend, Nellie Kilgour
This is Ally in Cyprus, in 1957, during his National Service days
This is my mum-in-law Peggy with Ally’s sister Ann
Here is Ally in Cyprus again, this time pictured in the army’s field bakery
Peggy and Alick snapped while out for a drive in the 1970s
Ally and me on our wedding day in 1956. On the left is our bridesmaid, Pat Forrest (now Machir) and on the right is our best man, Dave Gray
Our first son, Alick, aged nine months.
Alick was soon followed by two brothers and a sister. From left to right, they are Steven, Alick, Wendy and George
Also by Maureen Reynolds
Teatime Tales from Dundee
The Sunday Girls
Towards a Dark Horizon
The Sun Will Shine Tomorrow
McQueen’s Agency
A Private Sorrow
Indian Summer
COPYRIGHT
First published 2006
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2013
ISBN: 978 1 84502 663 9 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 664 6 in Mobipocket format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 165 8 in paperback format
Copyright © Maureen Reynolds 2006
The right of Maureen Reynolds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Ac
t 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay
Voices in the Street Page 34
