by Leah Fleming
Wilma seemed to be spending most of her life upside down, doing handstands and back arches: “showing off ” was what Peg called it and privately Netta tended to agree.
‘Ma wee schule’s a grand wee schule
The best wee schule in Glesga
The only thing that’s up wi’ it
Is the baldy-headed Maister.’
Dixie was skipping and singing at the same time.
‘You’re not going to sing that, are you?’ sniffed Netta in disgust.
Dixie kept on skipping:
‘He gans tae the pub on Saturday night
He gans tae the kirk on Sunday
An prays tae God to gie him strength
Tae belt the weans on Monday!
‘Don’t be such a toffee nose, Netta! A’ve got something much better!’
What would Miss Armour Broun say if she heard such stuff come ringing out of Stratharvar Hall but, try as Netta might, Wilma wouldn’t spill the beans about what exactly she intended.
On the night of the Christmas concert there was not a spare seat in the hall. It was a frosty night full of stars with a bomber’s moon lighting the sky but so far Scotland had been spared the blitzing feared for its cities and ports. The blackouts were carefully in place nevertheless. The children were herded into the classrooms to change into their outfits and chitter in the cold.
The infants started off with a pixie dance to the tune of the ‘Hi, Ho!’ music from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Juniors took a nautical theme and danced the Sailor’s Hornpipe and sang ‘Jolly Jack Tar’. There were carols for the audience to join in, recitations and Scottish dances, the homely mixture-maxture Stratharvar had come to love and expect from its pupils. Netta’s group did their best but the staging was cramped and clubs kept slipping at the wrong moment, plus bits kept falling off their costumes much to their embarrassment. Everyone clapped politely but Netta thought they were more like a herd of clumsy elephants than the Women’s Rural League of Health and Beauty. She stood at the back after the interval, curious to see if the ‘evaporees’ could produce anything better.
For all they were just from a rough city school it was not a bad showing: a boy jangling on the piano, a lad with bagpipes, and another with an accordion. A dark-haired girl with pigtails and a funny-sounding name sang ‘But it’s, oh, that A’m longin’ for my ainfolk…’ with such sweetness that there was not a dry eye in the hall. Then Wilma exploded on to the stage in lipstick with her Persil-white hair tied up with two huge paper ribbons, looking like a doll with rouged cheeks. Her costume was a glittery two-piece bolero and shorts, the sort gypsies wore all covered with glittery sequins – a little too much on the skimpy side for Netta’s liking. She sang or rather shouted ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’, twirling and birling like Shirley Temple. Then she smiled and sweetly curtsied, before reciting:
‘One, two, three alearie
I saw Wallace Beery
Sitting on his bumbalearie
Kissing Shirley Temple!’
Afterwards springing into a routine of handstands and back flips, arches and split and rollovers, ending with her legs folded over her ears in front of her. They all gasped at her contortions and she had the gall to smile through it all as if it was easy-peasy! That put Netta’s back up. How could she feel superior to someone who could do all that with just arms and legs?
‘That bairn must be made o’ India rubber,’ said a wifie on the back row.
‘So that’s how it’s done then, that’s where all my rubbers have gone,’ sniffed Netta. Miss Snakelegs had pulled a fast one and shown up their little routines for what they were: lumpen efforts. The audience loved this turn, cheering, clapping and shouting for an encore. But Wilma bobbed and dashed off the stage into the darkness.
Supper was served in the schoolroom and everyone basked in the success of the evening. A goodly sum had been raised and all the children had been given a Red Cross badge for their efforts. The first Christmas of wartime would not be so bad after all. They returned home in the farm van, tired but exhilarated. Netta said goodnight to Wilma with a little more respect.
‘You were really good the night. Who taught you to knot yersel into a ball?’
‘I went tae the circus and watched the acrobats. I sneaked in three times and watched them doing warm-ups round the back. I borrowed the costume from one of Maw’s friends. She does a dancing class. Do you like Shirley Temple?’
‘I like Anne Shirley better.’
‘What picture is she in?’
‘She’s in a book. I’ll lend it to you, if you like?’ Netta paused. ‘Will you teach me how to do walkovers?’
‘You’ll have to bend in the middle – you’re skinny but you cannae bend. Loosen yer back and arch slowly, follow yer hands… but it’s too cold now. Never do it cold or you’ll rick yer back.’
‘Did you enjoy our show?’ asked Netta, watching Wilma undress without taking off any underlayers.
‘I did so but it’s not the real thing, is it? I want to go on a real stage and wear real make-up.’
‘Peg says the stage’s no very respectable, but she’s never been to one so take nae notice of her…’
‘Why do you call yer maw, Peg?’ asked Wilma jumping into the bed.
‘She’s ma stepmother. I tried to call her Auntie Peggy for a while. If I had a real mother I wouldn’t want to be far away from her, like you twos.’
‘Aye, and one o’ these afternoons ma maw will come for us to go hame. There’s nothing much to do here, is there, except read books and go to kirk?’
As if her sighs had floated away like prayers northwards, just before Hogmanay a red-faced woman, round as a barrel but with neat ankles, arrived one morning at the farm to collect her children. Isa Dixey thanked Angus and Peg courteously for their hospitality as the children melted into her coat and she engulfed them in hugs, making Netta feel sad that no one did that to her. ‘They’re away hame with me the now. You think yer doin’ yer best for them but I canna sleep for want of them. God bless yous and a Guid New Year to one and all!’
The Dixeys left a gap behind them after that first exciting Christmas of the phoney war. One by one the other city children drifted back north. The farmhouse seemed silent and chill without their incessant banter and mischief. Netta and Wilma exchanged letters for a while but once the bombings started in earnest the Dixeys moved away and they lost contact for years as all of them got on with their growing up.
May 1949, Friday
Netta could feel the cramp in her thigh and thumped her leg on the loft boards. Why was Dixie’s handwritten programme shoved in with the gas mask? Had Peg put it there or Father in a clearout?
Those few months with Wilma had loosened Netta’s tongue and her joints. In fact, she could still do a mean cartwheel and one of these days would shock Gus on the shore with a back arch!
The Dixeys had opened her eyes to another tougher schooling where language was rich and fruity and living for the moment in blitz and bombings took nerves and courage. The colours of wartime had been so dreich with all that camouflage and blackout, gun-smoke grey and khaki everywhere. Yet Wilma with her red ribbons, Persil hair and rainbow sequins had brought sparkle to Stratharvar for a while. The evacuees who followed in their footsteps to Brigg Farm, were ground down by the Glasgow blitz and enforced separations. They never shone so brightly as that first pair.
Vida Bloom and her son Arnold came next. Vida left behind a gift so precious it had saved Netta on many an occasion. How strange that people could cross your path for the briefest of moments and yet leave their mark on you for the rest of your life. There was no forgetting those two, but was there anything tangible left her of their brief stay?
*
Peg clattered in the kitchen. Once woken she could not go back to sleep; an hour early in the morning was always worth two later. She liked to catch the house to herself and sit down with a pot of tea before the daily demands took a toll on her temper. The work of a farmer’s wife was n
ever finished. What time she took for herself had to be pared from all the chores of the day, gathered like shavings. They had not had a holiday since that honeymoon weekend in Edinburgh. Angus was never comfortable away from the dairy. He did not trust his men to do the jobs properly.
Sometimes she took Gus on the train to Ayr to see her own relations, but that was visiting and a duty. If she was honest Netta’s arrival did give the boy days out from under her feet. She would be fifty next year and coming to that awkward time of life when she felt tired and crabbit, flushed one minute, chattering the next. She ought to see Dr Begg about the flooding each month but it would have to get worse before she submitted herself to all that poking and prying down below. She might have to have it all taken away, and who would see to things then? It was not the sort of complaint she could discuss with anyone. Peg prided herself on keeping Nichol affairs firmly behind closed doors. The less people knew about their business, the less there was to surmise. She turned to see Netta holding out a box.
‘I found this in the loft: the old gas mask and a programme. Do you remember the Dixeys and the other evaporees? I thought Gus would like to see this old relic.’ Peg stared at the box. ‘Would I ever forget those devils! First I put up with Papes and then came yon Sheenies.’
‘Vida Bloom was no trouble, nor Arnold – not like the Dixeys! I’ve been thinking about that time when Vida first taught me to sew properly? What a wizard with her fingers and those invisible hem stitches.’
‘There’s no many would have all that strange palaver into their hoose like I did.’ Peg was remembering the noisy arrival of the mother and son to their billet with various pots and pans and dishes to be kept strictly for their own use. They had been bombed out of their tenement in Glasgow. Mr Bloom was a tailor with the army abroad. Vida was a tiny, frail young woman with her hair falling out from jangled nerves. Her hands shook constantly, a puff of wind would have blown the poor soul away. She was also in a state about Arnold’s education.
‘I’m sure you’ll be duly rewarded,’ muttered Netta, bristling. Peg’s comments were as usual icy and sharp, like water from their deepest well.
‘You made enough racket at the crack of dawn. I thought we’d elephants clomping over our heads! Did you find yer mother’s photographs? They’ll be packed away in a box somewhere to keep them out of the light. Your schoolbooks are up there too and a load of junk. I’ve no touched anything.’
‘If the Air Raid Warden had seen what’s stuffed up there, he’d have declared you a fire hazard! Honestly, Peg, it all needs a good sort out. Gus can help me go through the cases later.’
‘Plenty of time for that when we’re pushing up daisies. It’ll be all yours then and no doubt you’ll make a bonfire of it all.’
‘I just want to take my stuff back while I have transport. I’m after Mother’s tortoiseshell brush and comb set, my books and photos… but there are so many boxes and cases, we could run a jumble sale up there.’
‘You suit yersel’ and let me get on with ma own work. I’ve nae time to be bothering with all that junk!’ Peg turned to clear away her dishes. When she turned back Netta was gone.
It was Gus who found the dummy tucked away in a corner of the loft, covered in a lacework of spiders’ webs. ‘Look at this big doll.’ He pulled it out to examine it further. ‘Is it yours?’
Netta brushed away the dust of years and shook her head. ‘It belonged to a lady who came to stay in the war with her son who was in the big boys’ class. It’s a real tailor’s dummy. I think she borrowed it. We used to call her Mrs Sew and Sew. She could magic up the most wonderful clothes from scraps of nothing, just like Cinderella’s fairy godmother! She taught me to make dresses and cut patterns from sketches. Said I had sewing fingers. Her real name was Mrs Bloom.
‘Arnold was very clever. His head was always stuck in a book – not like yours. Where are all those picture books I sent you?’
Gus shrugged his shoulders. ‘Mammy says there’s no time for reading books in this house. Why did the blooming lady come here?’
‘They had no home of their own left and Mrs Bloom needed sea air and quiet to rest her nerves. They were refugees. You know about them, don’t you?’
He nodded solemnly. ‘Mammy says I have to eat up all ma greens for the starving refugees.’
‘Yes, and now they have to live in terrible camps or wander about. Do you know about that?’ Gus shook his head.
‘When you’re a bit older I’ll tell you all about that terrible time. That’s why we went to war: to keep our country safe. All those brave soldiers who never came home… we must never forget them.’
‘Did the lady and her son sleep in my room?’
‘Yes, but they lived in the parlour like a living room and Mrs Bloom took in sewing to earn some money. Arnold’s school was evacuated to Castle Douglas and she wanted to be near him for he was all she had left. I was at the big Academy by then, quite grown up, and Mrs Bloom let me sit and watch her sew sometimes.’
Netta fingered the dummy, feeling the pile of the cloth body, her mind drifting back to that happy, strange time when she had peered through a crack in the door, watching the firelight flickering in the parlour as the Blooms held their makeshift Sabbath meal each Friday evening. The smell of the lit candles on the tiny brass menorah, the scent of herbs in the pot, Vida Bloom with a scarf over her head speaking a foreign language and Arnold’s capped head bent in prayer.
No sewing work was done until Saturday night, however many orders Vida had promised for the following week. The folds of dressmaking materials were tucked away out of temptation, the long dressing mirror stood facing the wall and baskets of threads, Arnold’s clarinet case and music were piled neatly away.
When Sabbath ended work began in earnest again accompanied by music from the Third Programme on the small wireless. Peg complained much of it sounded like two cats howling in a dyke. Netta smiled to herself when she thought of the Blooms, shut away in their own private world and Peg huffing and puffing at their religious customs. Then she recalled that first wedding dress in all its glory and the faces of Stratharvar as the bride paraded to the kirk. That was when the sewing magic first began, when she and Vida were allies before all the threads of their past got knotted together in a fankle.
Dressing Miss Forsyth, June 1942
In that make do and mend world where everything was rationed, couponed or in short supply, the idea of a grand wedding in Stratharvar was a prospect to savour amongst the drab everyday routine of farm life. Of course, it was a patriotic duty not to flaunt regulations. Peg Nichol and all the other members of the Rural Women’s Institute wondered just how their Chairwoman, Mrs Daphne Forsyth, would see to it that her only daughter, Aileen, went down the aisle to meet her Squadron Leader bridegroom in traditional attire without looking as if she was away off for a job interview in her best two-piece suit.
At the make do and mend demonstrations they had discussed the merits of parachute silk and nun’s veiling over net curtaining and fine sheeting cotton to make the wedding gown. ‘Why should she be beaten by Mr Hitler or coupons?’ was the common consensus at Brigg Farm.
‘A bride ought to spend her precious extra coupons on a decent woollen coat and sturdy shoes rather than a bridal dress,’ declared Peg, thinking about her own modest rigout.
Mrs Bloom smiled sadly. ‘A coat you can wear any day but a bride can only wear white once in her life, don’t you think?’
Netta agreed, imagining herself on the arm of a Squadron Leader in airforce blue and medals, floating down the aisle like a snow princess, just like the accounts of Society brides in the Galloway News.
At sixteen she still had a schoolgirl’s romantic notions about marriage to a man in uniform. The only boy in her life was Arnie who tagged along the shore with her friends and lectured them about rock formations. She towered over him in height and thought of him still as a little boy tied by an invisible thread to his doting mother. One tug and he jumped like a puppet. He was not
allowed to mix with the rough and tumble village boys and always stayed in to practise his music – which was perhaps as well for the local louts shouted names at him whenever he appeared by Netta’s side.
Aileen Forsyth was well-upholstered, bonny but buxom. It would be easy for her to roll down the aisle looking like a couch on castors. ‘Why doesn’t Aileen ask Mrs Bloom to sew something for her?’ Netta whispered to Peg. Vida was earning a little from doing alterations and dressmaking but Netta knew she was capable of far more than that. ‘Tell Mrs Forsyth that Vida once worked in a great fashion house in London, making evening gowns from silks and tulle and handsewing sequins and beads on bodices. You did, didn’t you?’
Vida blushed and bent her head. ‘It feels like a lifetime ago… yes, I did train to do embroidery but where would I get such stuff to sew nowadays? No one wants that sort of thing here. It’s far too expensive.’
‘Take no notice of Netta, she’s always had her head full o’ dreams!’ Peg ignored the information and left the two of them to their chores.
‘You could make Aileen a wonderful dress, I know it,’ pleaded Netta, but the little woman shook her head sadly.
‘Those days are long gone, Netta. It’s a sad world out there and how could I make such a garment on my own?’
‘I could help you, be your assistant. It would make a change from schoolbooks and farm work. I’m sick of mucking out and feeding stock; pumping water from the well into the tank. You could teach me to do the easy bits. Go on, please? And you did say you wanted to pay for extra music lessons for Arnold. Let me ask them?’
So it was Netta who approached Stratharvar House by the grand gravelled drive and spoke to Aileen herself, suggesting she discuss her requirements with their evacuee. Two days later the Forsyths descended on Brigg Farm, demanding to see Vida Bloom and examine her work.