Of Different Times

by Agnes Kirkwood

  There was no carpets anywhere in the house so, you can imagine the noise as we ran upstairs, in and out of the three rooms, arguing who was having what. What I was more excited over was the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs, which actually had two taps, one for cold water and one for hot. We’d never had hot water in our house in the blocks, it had one big brass tap above the sink and that was the only water in the house. Any hot water came from the big black kettle that sat on the hob all day at the ready. No more would mum wash me in the boiler tub of the washhouse, then carry me across the yard with nothing but a towel wrapped around me, past all the boys playing in the yard then up the concrete stairs. No sharing the outside toilet with a neighbour or having to climb concrete stairs to get in the house. In our new house we had a garden, a kitchen with a cooker, and we actually went upstairs to bed at night instead of climbing onto a huge bed with curtains around feeling claustrophobic.

  When dad came back from visiting mum in the hospital that night and told us the doctor said mum should be coming home soon, we all jumped for joy. Dad gave us the usual lecture that was so familiar to us.

  ‘I want you all to be good and no more arguing or fighting, because your mum will be tired, and we don’t want her to get stressed up and end up back in hospital, do we?’ he said; looking at William and I in particular. We nodded and promised we’d be good, but the look on dad’s face told me he didn’t believe us. He knew it wouldn’t last long, and it didn’t. I think dad was as excited as we were at the thought of mum coming home, he looked at the end of his tether, and all he wanted was us to get settled in and back to school before she actually came home. It was only then that I believed mum was getting better after all, and I think my siblings believed it too. We were all excited and huddled together laughing and jumping up and down.

  I couldn’t believe this was our home, it was so spacious and it had its own kitchen, with an electric cooker. What excited me more than anything, straight across the road from our house was a swing park, which consisted of four swings a roundabout and a large slide; the large park had railings all around, it was used for games like football, rounders, cricket, and once a year used for the famous Miner’s Gala Day. It seemed like paradise compared to the blocks swings which were two swings at the end of the blocks set in knee high wild grass that was never cut, and the only access was a well-worn path created in the grass from feet, same between the swings.

  When we arrived home on our first day back at school we found my dad stressed out in the kitchen trying to cook dinner for us.

  ‘Away ye go and play in the park and I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready, and you Wilma, you can stay here and set the table for me,’ he said getting rid of William and me out of his road. We ran out the house and headed for the swing park across the road.

  ‘Race you,’ he shouted, so off I went racing to the gate, which was about fifty yards down the road. When I reached the swings inside, my brother was already there.

  ‘How did you get here so quick, you never passed me?’ I shouted.

  ‘I jumped over the railings.’

  ‘That’s cheating,’ I shouted. Then looking at his trousers I noticed one trouser leg reached the bottom of his knee, whilst the other was waving like a girl’s skirt.

  ‘What’s happened there?’ I said, and as I looked at him I thought of the mood dad was in.

  ‘My da will kill you,’ I giggled.

  ‘It’s not funny, my trouser leg got caught in the railings when I jumped,’ he stressed.

  All I could do was laugh.

  It was a great swing park, we played there for what seemed like an hour, and by that time I was starving, so when dad shouted us for our dinner, we both ran to the gate. William stopped and looked at his trousers. It looked like he was wearing a skirt. A woman was passing and I asked her if she had a safety pin.

  ‘Here hen, I always keep one in my purse for emergencies, ye never know when ye might need one, and looking at him he needs one,’ she said grinning as she opened her purse and handed me large safety pin. Lucky for my brother that woman had one. I did the best to pin the trouser leg together, it looked awful, but at least it stopped his trouser leg flapping.

  When we reached the kitchen my dad had his back to us at the cooker, so William hurried up and sat at the table before dad turned around and saw his ripped trouser leg. It was funny sitting there; it didn’t seem like our house, it felt as if I was in a strange house. Even my dad looked strange, him being all harassed, it was a side of him we had never seen before, but the worst was yet to come. When he laid the plate of potatoes and mince in front of us it looked so good, but, when we tried it we looked at each other with our faces all screwed up. I think the top must have come off the salt, because it was like eating raw salt. We were glad when he sat down and tried his. Straight away he spat it out shouting in a holy tone, ‘Jesus Christ, we can’t eat that.’ We ended up with jam sandwiches. Phew! That was one worry over with, before the next.

  I made my way to the bathroom with my ear against the door. My brother told him about his trousers, now if there was anything my brother was good at, this was it; I could hear him lying through his teeth when he was telling dad how it happened.

  ‘I was sliding Down that big slide in the park da, but there must have been a loose screw on it because it ripped my trousers.’

  Did my dad believe him? Well, the next thing I heard was a slap and a yelp. I can’t bring myself to write the words I heard that night.

  My dad was never meant to be a housewife, so when it came to sewing my brothers trousers that was one of the things he was hopeless at, so he glued them up with No-Sew, a type of wonder-web, as we know it today. All was fine but, next day at school as he sat at his desk near the large radiator it must have melted the glue, so when he stood up his trouser leg along with his grey flannel shirt stuck to the chair, and having no underpants on it showed his bare buttock. I laughed when he told me all the lassies were giggling at him.

  It was a Saturday when mum finally came home. We all waited in the house for the ambulance to bring her. I’ll never forget her face when she saw the house for the first time. Auntie Annie was there with my little brother who by this time was nearly two years old. As she entered the house she had the most relieving smile on her face, glad to be home and see us all waiting. We all cried as we hugged her, but mum had the biggest smile on her face which I’ll never forget. I think it was a smile of relief to be home beside us all. However, her smile turned to tears when she put her arms out to take my little brother Jimmy off my Auntie Annie. He screamed and turned away clutching my Auntie Annie around her neck so tight with fear. However, as the day went on he got used to her and his memory of her must have returned. When it was time for Auntie Annie to go home she had tears in her eyes, because little Jimmy was screaming after her.

  We soon all settled into our new house. It was like living in a palace compared to living in the blocks. Mum soon got better, and was up to her old self, cleaning, cooking, polishing. She was so house-proud of our new home she’d shout at us if we entered without taking our shoes off, which according to her voice she was back on track.

  We didn’t have much furniture for our new house. All the furniture we had in the blocks was a double bed, a large wardrobe and a tallboy from the one and only bedroom. From the living room we had to leave the large bed as it was set in a recess and couldn’t be moved, we brought our table and chairs, a sideboard and two armchairs, and of course my dad’s finest possession, his wireless. One thing that must have hurt dad more than anything was he had to get rid of his precious greyhounds, but I’m sure they went to a good owner, dad would see to that.

  I remember one day William and I were playing in the swing park, and from the top of the slide I noticed a large van stop outside our door. Out popped my dad and another man. I shouted my brother and told him what I saw. We both made a dash for home. Just as we were about to run in the open front door, we heard my mum’s raised voice.

>   ‘I don’t want anybody’s auld rubbish here in this house, you can take them straight back from where you got them.’ I won’t repeat my dad’s answer to that, but let’s just say William and me changed our minds about running in the front door and made our way around the back and sat quietly on the doorstep until we heard the van drive away. We never saw what dad had brought in the house, but we were very curious. When things quietened down we crept in the back door. My mum was sitting on one of the fireside armchairs with my little brother on her knee ignoring all that was going on around her. Dad had his nose in a huge box full of books that he had bought at an auction. I gingerly joined him on rooting in the box and came across a large book that caught my eye. It had a beautiful brown leather cover, and inside were hymns with the written music notes to each one, also psalms with painted pictures. It was about three inches thick. As I looked through it I fell in love with it and shouted, ‘Da can I have this book?’

  ‘Aye but you better look after it,’ he said, engrossed in the rest of the contents without looking up.

  I loved that book, and when I went to bed that night I was mesmerised as I turned each page. When I went to school next morning, I took it to show my pal Betty, who still lived in the blocks. Instead of waiting till playtime, I excitedly showed her it in the classroom.

  ‘What have you got there?’ the voice from hell shouted.

  ‘It’s only a book miss I brought it to show Betty.’ I said nervously

  ‘Out here at once and bring that confounded book with you,’ she angrily shouted, banging on her desk with the dreaded ruler.

  I sheepishly walked out with my book and handed it to her. She opened it up and looked inside, I could tell she was mesmerised with it, and thought she was going to say something nice but no, she must have been thinking of something nasty to say.

  ‘This is not a school book, it has no right being here, now get back to your desk and thank your lucky stars I haven’t sent you to the headmaster.’

  She confiscated my book and put it in her desk drawer I just made my way back to my desk terrified she was going to hit me with the ruler. I never saw my book again. I often wondered if it was worth a lot of money and that was why she kept it. Years later when I mentioned it to my dad, he wondered why I never told him, but the truth was I was frightened in case he told me off for taking it to school in the first place.

  The first piece of furniture if you can call it furniture my dad bought for our new house was a gramophone. He bought it from the auction. It looked brand new and my mum loved it. There were about a dozen large records with it; Bing Crosby singing, ‘I Love Those Dear Hearts in Gentle People’, and another two that I cannot remember who sang them, one called ‘Nursey-Nursey’, and the other, ‘Oh My Pa Pa’. These are the ones I remember because my mum played them all the time. It looked good sitting in the corner of the living room. It had little double doors at the front, which housed the speakers behind fancy trelliswork. At the side was a little handle for winding it up. When you opened the lid at the top, it had a chrome disc covered in a velvet cloth where you placed the record. A large chrome arm with a needle at the end, you swivelled it over and placed it at the beginning of the record. Every now and then the song would slow down to a slur and you had to run and wind the handle to make it speed up and play again.

  From then on things started to get better for us. Clothes were more abundant in the shops and at last, mum could go shopping to Stirling and buy us our own clothes when we needed them. I am not saying we had plenty but at least we didn’t have to rely on hand-me-downs. Although I loved our new house, I missed all the places we used to play when we lived in the Blocks. I regular went to play with my pal Betty who still lived there; after all it was on the way home from school. I remember one day we went to play down at the gummy pond, catching tadpoles in tin cans we picked up at the tip, I tried to place my tin can between two clumps of grass, when suddenly my foot slipped and I was up to my ankles in the slime.

  I couldn’t move my feet it was as if they had suckers on the bottom of them. I panicked and tried to pull them out, but the more I tried the more they were stuck. After a struggle, I managed to get one out with a loud slurp sound. However, the other was well and truly stuck. Betty took my hand and helped me to pull my foot free. It worked, I was free but my shoe was still in the slime, and no matter how hard we tried, we could not get it out. We looked for sticks to use, but they were no good it was making the shoe disappear even more because it went out of sight altogether. We had no other option but to give up after about an hour trying. All the way home I racked my brain to think of an excuse to tell mum, but I needn’t have bothered because she never listened anyway. She was furious and gave me a slap with every word that came out of her mouth.

  My mum waited until we were in bed before she told my dad. I was lying in bed listening to his reaction to the news. He went bonkers.

  ‘She’s only had them a couple o’ weeks,’ he shouted. ‘Well she can think a lot about the next pair she gets, because that’ll not be for a long time, there’s more kids than her to buy for in this house.’

  He meant it too because I had to go to school with an old pair of our William’s hobnail boots that were two sizes too big for me. That must sound funny but believe me it was no joke. Although in them days kids wore all kinds of footwear some in old wellingtons turned down because they were leaving sore scars on the back of their legs, some in canvas gym shoes, gutties we called them – it was nothing unusual to have holes in the soles of your shoes waiting for your dad to get the iron last out to mend them with a strip of leather nailed to the sole then with a sharp knife cut around the edges. You could always tell when your dad had mended your shoes; around the edges looked as they had been chewed instead of cut. Yes, I’ve worn the lot, but never hobnail boots. I got into more fights over them boots than anything else in all my schooldays. I wore those boots for the rest of the week until mum went to visit my Gran she came back with a pair of shoes that Gran had bought at the store for me. I cherished them shoes, and think I wore them until they were too small for me.

  We lived in our new house for just under a year when my Granda died. I loved him very much; he was Irish and had a very strong Irish accent. He lived in a little village called Throsk about one mile away from us, with my Auntie Liza (his daughter), and her husband Uncle Davy. My dad told me my Granda had a hard life. When dad was just nine years old Granda, was a military man and stationed at Stirling Castle a good five or six miles away. He had to walk all the way there at five o clock in the morning then walk all the way back at six in the evening. When Gran (my dad’s mother) took ill, Granda then got work at the Ammunition Depot at Throsk. She was ill for a long time, then when she died, he raised his daughter Liza and the younger son Joseph, who then was only two years old, whilst dad and his three other brothers were placed in Dumblane Military School for Boys; where they stayed all through their schooldays then went straight into the army. My dad was there until he was twenty-one years old, and then discharged with a perforated eardrum, that was when he started work in the pit.

  Granda thought the world of me. He would wait outside the school gate pretending he just happened to be passing by and walk me home. Sometimes he would give me sixpence but I never told mum in fear of losing it.

  I don’t think my mum and him got on very well, I often heard her moan about him to my dad, and of course I think the feeling was mutual, because he would pick up on all her mishaps and let my dad know. One day my mum was making toffee, and it was boiling away on the cooker, the smell was so sweet and tempting – my brother lent over the pan to smell the aroma coming off the boiling toffee, he stuck his finger in the pan to have a taste, and gave out such a scream that we all ran to see what had happened. Mum was beside herself when she realised what he had done and rushed him over to the sink to run the cold water on his burn. Granda looked at him as he wriggled in agony, and just walked away with not a care in the world.

  ‘You greedy
little bugger that’ll teach you not to be so bloody greedy in future’ he said casually. My mum was so angry at Granda’s attitude as my brother was screaming his heart out,’ with his finger nearly burned to the bone, she gave him a piece of her mind. That night I could hear her telling my dad all about it, so when I saw my Granda the next time I said,

  ‘My mammy hates you Granda.’ I will never forget the grin on his face.

  ‘Oh! Be Jay-sous; I quite believe that,’ he answered, in his strong Irish accent.

  We lived in that house for over a year, and then my dad put in for an exchange for a house off the main road. I think he was frightened in case my little brother wandered onto the road. We had a gate on the gable end, but our next door neighbour had access to use this to get to his back door and garden. They were for ever leaving the gate open. One day my mum was doing the weekly wash and my little brother was playing happy in the garden with the gate shut, she hung the clothes on the line and when she turned round he was gone. He was found at the front; making his way across the main road to the swing park. When dad got to know he went next door and complained to the man that his family were leaving the gate open. It started an argument, which nearly came to blows, and we never spoke to them again. Within a couple of months we exchanged houses with a woman who lived in the next street who had two teenage boys and was very keen to get a house on the main road.

  My dad knew a man who had a little grocer’s shop and he came with his van and took all the big things like beds, wardrobes, and other large furniture, while we all carried the small things round. We were all excited, I still remember the first meal in our new house it was fish and chips from the chip van that used to come round the village at night. We soon settled in as if we had lived there for years, and the neighbours were great. Of course we knew them from living in the Blocks.