Of Different Times

by Agnes Kirkwood

  The two older cousins who also worked at Kilbagie; one was a year older than me the other three years older. I hung about with the one who was just a year older. Although I was a bit of a tomboy at home, and could really look after myself when I came face to face with trouble, living at Gran’s changed all that, I immediately quietened down to the extent I was very quiet and a bit withdrawn really. I loved Gran but she was very old fashioned and I felt like a stranger in her house sometimes, especially at night when there would be some aunt or uncle visiting, and I felt I had to get out of the house and give them some privacy with Gran and Auntie Barbra. I spent a lot of time over at my uncles with my cousin. All went well for the first two or three weeks but then I fell out with her because she tried to bully me in front of her friends to make herself big.

  When I told my Auntie Barbara, she told me not to stand for it, and to stick up for myself. That was all I wanted to hear, so the next time she tried to use me as her stooge I just turned around and gave her one, or maybe two, anyway we ended up fighting, and were sent to the office where we both got told off with a warning that if it ever happened again we would both be sacked. I stopped talking to her, when she tried to talk to me I just ignored her.

  I went babysitting for one of my older cousins and we got on the subject of what we liked. When I told her I was mad on skating, she gave me a pair of skating boots that she had when she was my age, but had never gone back since she got married, she says I could have them. Wow! It was just as if someone had given me a million pounds, Gosh, I cleaned them skates till the blades were gleaming and the boots were whiter than snow. No more will I have to wear them wobbly filthy hired boots. I soon had my own circle of friends, particularly Mary who worked in the same department, we went on all our tea and dinner breaks together. When we got on the subject of skating I was pleased when she told me she also liked skating. She turned out to be my best friend. Mary lived in Kincardine, and every Saturday night I would meet her and a few other friends at the Falkirk bus station then we would make our way to the ice rink. There were seven of us altogether, three boys and four girls. When we arrived at the rink the curling was still in process, so we had to wait about half an hour for it to end before the rink was open to skaters.

  We were a typical happy group of teenagers, all sitting upstairs together, happily talking about which new records were in the charts, or telling our experiences at work that week, basically just laughing and joking having a good time. We all looked after one another and had a great time and enjoyed a really close friendship.

  Living at Gran’s house was alright, but I never thought I would ever admit this but I missed my family, the arguing with my brother over music, and the jiving in the living room, the youth club through the week, the squabbling of us all at meal times. Although Auntie Barbara could cook it wasn’t like my mum’s cooking. Auntie Barbara was good to me and treated me like a daughter but, it was not the same as living at home with my brothers and sisters. It was getting a strain coming home on Friday nights, going to skating on Saturday night then having to go back to Gran’s on a Sunday night ready for work the next day. I seemed to be travelling about like a gypsy. My mum could see that I was homesick, and asked my sister Wilma if she could put a word in for me at her works.

  One Friday night I arrived home for the weekend and was pleased when my sister said she arranged an interview for me at the Cork and Seal factory at Bridge of Allen in Stirling. When I asked for a day off form work I never mentioned it was for another job, I can’t remember what excuse I gave but I got the day off.

  I was so nervous walking into the factory that day I’d have given anything to have had my Auntie Cathie with me. As I entered the gatehouse a man poked his head out of the little window and asked what I was doing there. I told him I was there for an interview. He asked my name as he picked up the telephone, then opened the gate and told me to wait inside explaining someone would be out in a minute. Finally a middle-aged woman came out and told me to follow her to the office.

  As I entered the factory it was a completely different atmosphere. In the mill there were no machines just the rustle of paper being overhauled. The factory was rowdy with machines everywhere and the noise was deafening. She took me into a little glass-fronted office that faced the department. The interview was completely the opposite from the one at the mill when my aunt was with me. I was asked all kinds of questions, and must have been in there for about half an hour. After the interview the supervisor took me all around the factory and explained every machine to me. There must have been hundreds of women working there. She took me into my sister’s apartment where they made all kinds of lids for different things like jars bottles tins everything that had a lid. All eyes seemed to be on me and I can still remember the little grin my sister gave me that day, it was as if she was saying to all the other girls, This is my little sister.’ Not like the grin I get at home which was more like a snarl!

  Because I was too young for the machines, I was led to a quieter part of the department and shown where I’d be working if I got the job. Quieter was an understatement as we still had to shout when talking to each other. We stopped at a long moving conveyer belt with lots of bottle tops that had the brand of a whisky printed on the top. As the tops moved along the belt women stood packing them into the cardboard boxes in rows with the name facing up, and when the layer was finished they’d put another cardboard tray on and repeat the process until the box was full. It was then laid on top of the conveyer belt where another woman at the end would tape it closed and place it on a pallet four wide and six high. She was a big woman with muscles like a wrestler, I suppose she had to be as these boxes full of metal tops must have been heavy to throw six high on to that pallet. When the pallet was full a man would come with a forklift truck and wheel it to a warehouse ready for dispatching.

  It was hard to believe that each one of those tops would go on a bottle of whiskey. It just showed how much whiskey is actually sold throughout the world, and this was just the one brand, the factory done dozens of different ones. Wow!

  I was shown a pile of flattened cardboard boxes on a pallet and told this is what I’d be doing if I got the job. I would have to open up the cardboard and place it with the writing upside down, on a wooden block, fold, close, and tape up the bottom up with the brown gummed paper that rolled through a machine which wet the glue, I then had to place them on the conveyer belt right way up for the packing women. I seemed to be in there for hours and by the time I left the factory, I was beginning to have my doubts about working there. My head was splitting and I just couldn’t get the sound of the machines out of my ears. I was actually hoping I never got the damn job; surely there was something better out there for me I thought. When my sister came home from work that night she said the supervisor came to her just before finishing time and told her to tell me I had the job, and to start the following Monday after I’d given a week’s notice to my present employer.

  I had only worked at the mill for about ten months, But I was so happy to be leaving it. My mum was over the moon, and asked me if I was glad: I just shrugged my shoulders with a half-smile, what was the use of arguing I thought, at least I’ll be living back home.

  After a couple of weeks working there, I felt like my old self again living back in the bosom of my family. Even my big sister seemed to treat me different; we used to go for the same bus in the morning and the same coming home at night. She still occasionally tried to treat me like a child, but I was having nothing of that, after all I was grown up now. Well, so I thought. She did try the big sister act, but it didn’t work anymore, not after our differences the night my mum went to a parents’ evening at school with my dad to see my little brother and sister’s teacher. We had just got in from work that night and discovered the house completely empty, which seemed odd, because mum was usually home from her work before us and had the dinner on the go.

  My sister remembered mum telling her that morning about having to go to school that
night. She told me to hoover the carpet while she brushed the hearth with the companion brush and shovel. Now it wasn’t because I didn’t want to help, it was just the telling, and not the asking that made me retaliate, because being strong headed and determined I was adamant that I was not going to be bossed about by her anymore, I’d had enough of that in the past so I blatantly refused and shouted, ‘Do it yourself, I’m not your slave.’ As far as I was concerned she was addicted to brushing that fireplace, the least bit of ash that fell out of the fire onto the hearth, she’d grab the brush and shovel. It reminded me of years ago when she babysat us when mum visited Gran, she was the same then, always sweeping the hearth making herself look busy; whilst my brother and I did the dishes and tidied the kitchen, then she’d order us to bed before mum came home so she would get the praise for all the hard work. It really used to get on my nerves. There was no other word for it; she was horrible to us then.

  Anyway, that night she was really angry with me and grabbed the hoover herself. As I sat on the couch determined not to move she came nearer and bashed into my ankle in temper, it really hurt, so I got up and gave her a punch, which turned into World War Three. As we were rolling on the floor with fist and hair flying ever where, in walked my mum and separated us. It was a good job dad had gone straight to a meeting after the parents’ evening, else we would have got a good telling off and probably made to stay in that weekend.

  That night the air was blue in our house for mum went on and on all night. I really thought she was going to tell dad when he got in, but she never did. Nevertheless, guess which one got all the blame and punishment, yes me as usual, but it was like water off a duck’s back. From that time on I felt like her equal, and to be quite honest I think she got the message as well, because we got on a lot better after that little escapade. We often laughed about it years later.

  I took up with some of the girls from our village who worked with me, and through the week we’d meet and walk down to the side of the church to a little hut where they held the youth club. Every one brought records and gave them to the person who was in charge of the record player, where they’d put your name on the cover so we could pick them up after it had finished. It was great we’d jive and bop till the cows came home. In them days we didn’t think about alcohol, after all I wasn’t quite sixteen, it was all tea and biscuits at half time. Or if you were well off you’d buy a coke, which was not very often, because the wages were only about four pounds, which was handed straight over to mum when I got home. Out of that I got ten bob, which is fifty pence in to-days money, even then it never went far and I needed it for going to the skating at weekends.

  The girls at work would relieve each other so they could go to the lavatory to have a quick fag. I used to go as well when it was my turn, just for the break; even though I didn’t smoke at the time. I’d stand there leaning against the wall with my hands behind my back just listening to them talking about their boyfriends and dancing at the plaza. I felt like a little school girl standing there with my ankle socks on. I think that was the reason I started to smoke in the first place. Although I stopped over twenty years ago, smoking was one of my biggest regrets.

  One night my mum was talking to our next-door neighbour over the back fence and I noticed her fags and matches lying on the mantelpiece, there was no one about so I pinched one out of the packet along with a couple of matches and sneaked upstairs to the bathroom. With the window open I placed the fag in my mouth and lit it up. I took one good puff and nearly choked myself, I hated it, but as long as I didn’t inhale it I never coughed, so I stuck it out. When I was finished I got the toothpaste and squeezed some into my mouth to take the smell of smoke away. I was sweating guilt when mum went into the bathroom about five minutes after me, and came out shouting,

  ‘Our William’s been smoking in that bathroom again, just wait till he comes in.’ Then she turned to me and shout ‘Did you not smell the reek when you walked in there?’ I timidly answered saying ‘Aye mam, but I didn’t want to tell tales.’ When my brother came in, I stood there with guilt in my heart listening to mum telling him off, but because he was in the habit of sneaking into the bathroom for a sly fag anyway, he never clicked that it was me. So I got off with it. I was wary after that I always waited till she was in the kitchen before helping myself to one of her fags, then I’d sneak behind the shed; it was safer there.

  With a fag in my hand, it made me feel grown up. There was a little shop at the bus stop that sold fags, so I’d buy five Woodbines on a Monday morning, and they would last me a good two or three days as you never had time at work to smoke a full fag anyway, and at night I had mum’s packet usually on the mantelpiece. Between my brother and me it’s funny she never noticed the missing fags that had disappeared out of her packet. When I went to have a smoke I’d only have two or three puffs at a time then I’d nip it out and put it back in my packet for another time. When it came to the end of the fag which in them days had no filter tips, I’d smoke it right down to the end with the aid of a pin stuck in to be able to hold it: a favourite with all the girls then. By Friday morning I was down to a couple of coppers until we got our wages that day. The little shop sold single fags so I’d buy one, and make it last all day by having a puff then nipping it again. I never really liked it at first, but after a time I got addicted to them. If anyone asked me why I started to smoke I’d tell them the truth, it made me feel older with a fag in my hand and because nearly all my work pals smoked, I fitted in better.

  I still kept friends with Mary and the group from Kincardine, and although I missed working with her, we still had our Saturday nights together at the skating rink with the rest of the group, what we all loved anyway. The only thing I missed was travelling to the skating in the same bus as them. Living back at home meant I had to get a different bus to Falkirk and meet the rest of the group in there, about seven off us altogether. I wouldn’t have missed it for a million years. It was the highlight of my week.

  On Saturday nights it was a race for the bath between my sister and me. Remembering what she was like and how long it took her to get ready, made me wary. She always went to the Plaza on Saturday nights, which was ok, but when she started to get ready it used to annoy me to the point that I would actually time her when I was younger. And it always took her over two hours. First she’d spend an hour in the bathroom bathing, shaving her legs, under her armpits. Then she’d spend an hour at the dressing table mirror with her dressing gown draped over her shoulders standing there with her horrible looking suspender belt with its dangling straps hanging down her thighs which fastened the very delicate sheer nylon stocking that she so gently slid up her legs, in case of laddering. Then another half an hour at the mirror putting her makeup on, fussing over her hair after she’d removed a headful of rollers, combing this way and that way before she was satisfied. She’d walk about for another hour with her dressing gown on waiting until it was time for the final and most important part of her attire. Just before it was time to go for the bus she would carefully slide the ballroom frock over her head, put on her coat, gloves and high heeled shoes, then what used to make me smile was, after all that fuss with her hair she’d wrap a headscarf around her head, with the job complete she’d head out the door. Because I went out before her I’d run upstairs as soon as I got in from work and run the bath, then at least all I had to do later was get dressed. Then later I’d go upstairs and come down less than an hour all raring to go. I’d go for the six o’clock bus wearing my favourite red jeans and my new skates that my cousin gave me hanging over my shoulders by the laces I felt like a million dollars. I loved it and as I stood at the bus stop, my stomach would turn as soon as I saw the bus coming.

  I always got there before the rest of the group, but was never bored because I’d sit and watch the curling, it seemed to me that it was an old person’s game, but I know different now. Every now and then Mary and I would just sit on the benches to have a smoke and a chat catching up on all the gossip at work, the
atmosphere in the ice rink was electric, the music blared out just like it does at the fair, people of all shapes and sizes would skate around the rink as if on a one-way street. Some good skaters some just barely managing to stay on their feet and of course you always got the show off, repeatedly pyramiding in front of you then glancing to see if you were watching. Yes it certainly catered for all kinds of people, we loved it. When they announced over the loudspeaker to clear the ice ready for the speed skaters, all the group would gather together, and all hold hands and fly around the rink. We’d take it in turns to be at the end which would whiz you around at high speed without having to move. After the speed skating they would clear the ice again for the dancing partners. That was when we’d all go to the cafe and sit around the table having a cup of tea, and a biscuit. The laughter would turn heads, but we didn’t care, we were enjoying ourselves. After working hard all week it was our way of unwinding and getting rid of the week’s stress by letting our hair down.