by Isla Blair
The afternoon was spent running round the hotel (what nightmares we must have been) and usually I found my way to the long silent ballroom. On a small stage was a grand piano. I would open it and feel the keys and play, tunelessly, as if I were a concert pianist, longing to make the sound I knew should come from it, but not having the knowledge or the skill to produce it. It wasn’t long before a member of staff, alerted by the dreadful racket, came in and scolded me. I was not put off, however, and crept into the ballroom every “going-out” day.
Holidays were more problematic, with our parents in India anxiously making decisions that they felt were the best for us.
Besides, there were the children in upper class houses in England, brought up by a nanny and sent to boarding school, who during the holidays saw little of their parents. Fiona and I knew we were loved and that made the separation from our parents bearable.
SEVEN
Billeted Out
Holidays could be fraught, but often turned out surprisingly well. To begin with, we holidayed with my mother’s parents. Staying with my grandparents was not a satisfactory solution. We were ten and six, my grandparents lived on a main road in Prestwick, Ayrshire, and they were unused to small children. We usually went for errands in the morning coming back for lunch at 12 noon. The morning started early with the shipping forecast just before six, played loudly in the bathroom next door to our bedroom, and the smell of a cigarette that Charlie, our grandfather, had on the go as he shaved. So the days stretched somewhat endlessly. In the afternoon, my grandparents rested as they had done in India, and Fiona and I were expected to make ourselves scarce or be very, very quiet.
There was no TV, of course, so afternoons were spent on Prestwick Beach. Winter days are the ones I remember, with the tide far, far out and worm casts on the sand – which rather alarmed me, as I knew the worms would be underneath there somewhere. And it was cold, so cold with the wind chafing our faces and giving us pains in our ears. I tied my long maroon and blue school scarf around my head, but still the wind seemed to penetrate, causing my eyes to water and my head to pound. We would tramp the streets, the golf course too, often in the bitter wind – dreading that it might be toad-in-the-hole for lunch or creamed spinach or bacon and egg pie, with undercooked bacon and those horrid white grizzly bits. Yuk!
I never really liked my grandparents, if I’m honest, although they were kind enough to me. Charlie had a resentment of my mother, because she so resembled the Charles that preceded him, my natural grandfather, Charles Skeoch. Charlie was a dapper man, a teetotaller; he’d had a bad war with memories of lice and mud and drinking so much he got the DTs. Like so many of his contemporaries, he never mentioned the War.
My grandmother had a wonderful singing voice and sang in many amateur productions, but when she expressed the idea of doing so professionally, all hell broke loose – her father threatened to disown her. Her dream never flowered into ambition or reality. It just got locked in a little box of thwarted hopes that became tarnished with bitterness.
She was a plump woman, loud and garrulous, with dyed black hair and too much makeup. I was embarrassed by her. Her powder smelt floury and her cheeks and lips were too bright. She sometimes looked like a Pantomime Dame and smelt old-ladyish – violets or lilac, sweet and sickly. I got the feeling that she didn’t like me very much. She was always saying, “Oh, Isla,” in a resigned sort of a way as she cast her eyes to Heaven, or “Charlie, tell Isla to behave.” Of course, they didn’t know us any more than we knew them. My mother thought the world of her though, so I learned to keep my lack of affection for my grandmother to myself; I didn’t even tell Fiona. It somehow felt disloyal to my mother that I didn’t really like hers.
She did however, give me a piece of advice that I have acted on all my life. “When you get to be a big girl, Isla, when you are old enough to vote – you must use it. Women have not always been able to vote, it has been fought for. A lot of women have suffered to enable us to have the right, the privilege of voting. You should try to find out what you can about the political parties and vote for the one whose policies you most agree with. Never waste your vote.” At the time, politics, voting, men in dark suits mumbling together, seemed a dull concept, but I have never failed to follow this advice. How can I protest against anything if I have sat on a fence? Apathy is always an enemy. My voice may not count for very much, but it is my voice – and amongst many others, it can make a chorus.
Once, my grandmother sent me to an old man up the road to have my ankles massaged with talcum powder, as she thought they looked thick and chunky. ”You don’t want to end up with the Stewart legs!” (Apparently, women on the Stewart side of the family had tree-trunky legs.)
For the first time, I smelt that “old man smell” – sports jacket in need of a good clean, hair oil and that indefinable acrid “old man’ scent and I hated having my ankles pummelled by this dour, silent stranger – it felt uncomfortably intimate –and couldn’t wait to run away. Although my ankles are reasonably slim, I have quite a thing about them still and tend to wear long skirts or trousers.
To be fair to my grandparents, we must have been a handful. Fiona was sensitive and easily hurt, trying so hard to keep us both ‘good’, and I was wilful and naughty – not easy to keep in check. Two small girls that they didn’t really know, but were responsible for – difficult.
Somehow the person I was, Isla, wasn’t up to much – or rather, up to too much, in a getting-into-trouble sort of a way. I was always being scolded, so often I didn’t know what for, so it was me, the inside of me, the kernel, the essence that was unsatisfactory. It was hard to change if you didn’t know which part of you was unacceptable.
So I decided to be other people. I retreated into the world I shared with Doris Day, Pier Angeli and Jean Simmons; I’d swathe myself in chiffon scarves, make lipstick out of red Smarties and grind Grandad’s matchstick embers into powder, spit in it and make interesting eye makeup. I was Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland (“I am Mrs Norman Maine”) with freckles and large sunhat and my hands would make a camera lens. I’d examine my face with scorn that it did not have blue eyes and freckles like Debbie Reynolds. I’d pour water into my eyes and sit in front of the mirror to watch the tears course down my cheeks like the girl in Ben Hur, “Oh Judah, Judah Ben Hur.” I’d swish my short hair as if it was Pier Angeli’s swaying curtain; I’d be delicate and slow and calm, evoking Jean Simmons in “The Robe” and I’d try to copy her voice with its precise vowels and slight nasality. I’d laugh openly like Doris Day and cup my hand over my mouth the way Debbie Reynolds did in “Singin’ in the Rain” I’d look at people levelly, like Deborah Kerr, but that would prompt the reaction “What are you staring at Isla?”
I didn’t have a favourite doll or soft toy to share my bed and my company – my companions had dimples and eye-liner and preposterous eyelashes and straight white teeth. I was six years old and I felt that Hollywood might accept the girl that people found so provoking and I wished daily that I might go there. However, it can sometimes be a blessing when wishes do not come true.
I have seen friends and colleagues go to Hollywood and try to measure up to that town’s demands. They jog and go to the gym several times a day, have their teeth fixed and their noses straightened, their breasts enhanced and their tummies tucked, bags removed from under their eyes and their faces lifted and tightened until they look as if they are swimming under water. All this and no work, plenty of rejection and loss of self esteem, so that they lose sight of who they are; their reflections in the mirror are strangers. It is as if their talent is of no consequence at all – that it all comes down to looks and being young.
It wasn’t long before our grandparents wrote to our parents to say that they could no longer look after us, so next holiday we were dispatched to Newtonmore, near Kingussie, Inverness, to stay with Molly and Jack Aitken, friends of my parents in India who had set up a “holiday home” for children whose parents lived abroad. Molly was the sweete
st, kindest, most gentle of creatures, who stood 6’ 1” in her stockinged feet. Jack was rather forbidding, but we didn’t have much to do with him.
The beautiful Cairngorm hills were there for us to roam over, there were brown rivers with deep pools that we were forbidden to go near, there was Mr Fusty, the sweet shop owner to whom we paid frequent visits, there was the tiny local cinema, there were rabbits and countless sheep and above all, there was Molly’s gentleness overseeing all. We felt secure and safe, although I think poor Fiona was in a constant, nagging state of concern that I would do something unpredictable and unacceptable and we would be asked to leave; this anxiety about having nowhere to go was a constant worry for her.
I remember once we got miffed by Jack’s shouted orders about something rather trivial and decided we were being too harshly treated. We saved our tea and a couple of apples, spilled the contents of our not very heavy piggy banks and one sunny afternoon we headed for the hills. We had no idea where we were going. We sat by the deepest of the deep brown pools of the Spey River, leaning against lichen covered birch trees and contemplated our future. A couple of curious sheep stared at us and soon there seemed a flock of them – just looking. with empty eyes and moving mouths – surrounding us. Blank eyes in sheep, or in people come to that, are decidedly unnerving and very soon we realised that we ought really to head home. Besides, we’d eaten our cake and our apples. We arrived expecting the wrath of Jehovah to descend upon us. In truth, no one had noticed our absence.
I wanted my parents at Christmas time and I wanted so much to share my birthday with them, when Mummy had always said “Happy Birthday, Saluki, this is a special day for me because it is the day that you were born.” And I’d glow and feel glad.
Presents were a source of anticipation that usually ended in disappointment. Not having anyone to explain details of a longed-for gift, it was left to a surrogate parent who didn’t care hugely if they got the gift right; it was nearly always a let-down.
I longed for long, tumbling hair, but my fine hair was always cut short. I loved Jean Simmons’ looped-up hair in “The Robe” and Rita Hayworth’s of course – her hair was always ripply, shiny and gorgeous. Debra Paget and Pier Angeli had shiny, swingy hair and I ached for hair that I could brush and pile on top of my head and stick with pins. The next best thing was a wig. I asked for a wig, a long haired wig. I had no idea that a real hair wig would be very expensive (I know now, being a regular customer at all the theatrical wig makers and indeed, when I lost my hair, briefly, to typhoid, I got myself a very expensive one) and acrylic wigs had not been invented. What I had not expected was a woollen wig from a joke shop, the colour of the sick-bay’s beige carpet; it was set in plaits, Heidi style, and it couldn’t be brushed or altered. It seemed sort of knitted. When I put it on, it only covered three-quarters of my head; my own hair was very evident and made the woolly wig look even beiger. It was horrid. Hot tears of disappointment stuck in my throat. Mummy would never have bought me such a horrid thing; she would have known, because I am her baby Saluki with hair the colour of conkers. But of course she wasn’t there and the wig went immediately to the back of the wardrobe.
Then there was the musical box. I had in mind a musical box that opened up to reveal a woman in a ball gown, dancing with a man in a uniform, like the one Edmund Purdom wore in The Student Prince, or a ballerina spinning round and round in a white tutu with a mirror behind her reflecting her spinning, making two of her. I imagined the box to be in white or in rosewood with delicate marquetry. These were the musical boxes I had seen in other people’s houses, or in antique shop windows. I opened my special present on my birthday and found a tiny box made of light pine with a picture of a sleeping hedgehog pasted on the top. When you opened it all you saw was the workings of the little metal strips ping pinging out the tinkling strains of Brahms’ “Lullaby”. It was a baby’s box – not the box for a girl, not one with a ballerina or a dancing couple. I was lucky, I suppose, to get a musical box at all, but somewhere in my heart I knew it was not the box my mother would have chosen.
Most disappointing of all was the bicycle I had asked for, for Christmas. I’d seen them in shops; Fiona had one and so did most of the people at Newtonmore. All the children were older than me and zoomed about leaving me behind, and I wanted to join them. Their bikes were shiny red or blue or green and they had Raleigh or Hercules written across them. The saddles were black leather and polished and the bells and the lights were sparkling chrome. I knew that bikes were expensive, so I’d said it could be my birthday present as well and the Christmas present after that. I hadn’t been able to sleep all the night through on Christmas Eve, I was so excited. We opened our stockings of oranges and nuts and sugary things, mice and lollipops and peppermint sticks that looked like those poles in a barber shop and other things, whirring tops and a skipping rope. The time came for the opening of the presents. “Isla, come out into the corridor.”
I did, with all the others following. This, then, was it; this was the longed for moment. I‘d get my bike. There it was, not shiny, or red or green with Raleigh or Hercules printed on it. It was a little bike, secondhand, painted blue with household gloss that was thick and bobbly, and the bell had small spots of rust on it. It was not new, so it was not mine. It had been someone else’s, not my very own special for-Isla bike. Spoilt of me, but that’s how I felt. Perhaps my parents had said a secondhand one would do, but they would have known how disappointing it was to get this one. Fiona knew of course and said she was proud of me for not making a fuss.
Our guardians lived in Craigerne Hotel, which was a small private hotel in Newtonmore that overlooked the hills and the ravishing swoop down to the Spey River. There was a dining room and the guests’ lounge and a little sitting room at the back that was Mollie and Jack’s that we were allowed to visit. There was the sun lounge, or wide conservatory, which was where the wireless was and where I would hear “Listen with Mother”. The stairs led up to the bedrooms and against the wall on one of the landings was a ladder that reached the loft and the bedroom I shared with Fiona. Frankie, the Aitken’s sixteen-year-old daughter, had a little room just off ours, which was separate. Ours was airy and light with two skylights, but it got quite hot in the summer and, as there was no blind, the light woke us at about 5.00 am by shining on our faces. We had twin beds and a chest of drawers that we shared, where we kept our clothes and what treasures we had.
I was usually sent to bed before Fiona, so I lay awake until she came up and we whispered long into the night until Frankie would shout, “Shut up, girls”. I was not a good sleeper. I’d wake up and sometimes clamber down the ladder in the night and frighten Mollie by sitting in a chair in the sun lounge looking out at the dark. It troubled Mollie that I didn’t sleep and she sent for the doctor who pronounced that I had too much imagination and must have no stimulation before bedtime. So Mollie would sit with me as I bathed and sometimes, when she wasn’t too busy with hotel business, she would see me into bed and we’d talk as she stroked my hair. I loved Mollie, but I didn’t feel comfortable with her attention, as I felt she was distracted and wanted to be downstairs, sorting out tomorrow’s problems, so I would pretend to feel sleepy and turn over, muttering “Good night, Aunt Mollie,” I turned back once she had gone down the ladder again, and waited for Fiona to come up. Sometimes I was asleep before she came, but often I would stare into the dark and think things.
Mollie taught me how to iron, listened to the wireless with me, tucked me up in bed and helped me curl my straight hair for what I considered special occasions. It always looked awful. Mollie learnt of my love of singing and she and her mother, Mrs Dickie, would actually pay me to sing to the guests in the hotel. I’m not sure this was very good for me. I was given attention, which I liked, and praise, which I liked even more. Some of the guests would ask me to sit on their laps and sing a song especially for them. I didn’t like that quite so much. But I liked it when the little sitting room was crowded and I started my reperto
ire of “The Girl that I Marry”, “Christopher Robin”, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, “The Man that Got Away” and “Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen By the Sea”, “Bless this House” and “In a Monastery Garden”. Fiona wasn’t too sure it was good for me either, but she and the other children enjoyed the cache of cash that grew and that we all shared out at the sweet shop, but she was constantly anxious that I would forget the words or sing out of tune – or simply be embarrassing.
I don’t think she thought I was showing off. I didn’t think so either. She was fearful that I would let myself down in some way. I liked the way that people would clap and pat me on the head. Some of them hugged me, even kissed my cheeks. I wanted so much to be hugged and kissed, but not by people I didn’t know. Now, as an adult, I love to hug and kiss my own close loved ones, but I’m not a touchy-kissy person with friends or colleagues. I don’t constantly touch arms or hands, I don’t kiss on every meeting and feel vaguely uncomfortable if people are overly tactile with me or invade my space in conversation.
Summer days were lovely at Newtonmore, with light, long evenings, purple hills, lots of wild rabbits that I tried to tame, midges of course, highland midges, but the rain was soft and the light golden. We went for bike rides to Kingussie (actually, as the youngest, I usually got deposited on the side of the road on a bank, as I couldn’t keep up, and was instructed to await the others’ return). Those sheep again. By now I was used to them and tried to talk to them, even sing to them, and was quite aggrieved that they paid no attention, not even blank eyed stares.
I loved those days and then, one glorious summer when I was eight years old, our mother was home from India and shared them with us. I learned to sew on buttons and to play tennis, I sang songs for anyone who would give me money. Mummy decided that this was definitely not good for me and put a stop to it. Not only because of the petting I was subjected to, not because she thought I was starting to preen, but because she noticed the joy of performing was starting to wane; I wasn’t enjoying it anymore – and besides, Mummy felt I was being turned into a performing seal. She had always been alarmed rather than charmed by Shirley Temple and here was her daughter becoming just like her.