She was fiercely, proudly Scottish and got upset, huffed and harrumphed at any criticism. When I read out figures saying that Glasgow was the crime capital of the UK, with more razor gangs than anywhere else, she would sniff and say, ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’ She had once read a line in the Daily Express in which someone was quoted as saying that Motherwell (her hometown) was ‘a long dreary town’. She never forgave the paper for that.
Like most of her generation, she believed Culloden was some sort of triumph not a massacre, Robert the Bruce did no wrong, the Duke of Cumberland was a butcher and Robert Burns was a paragon of all the virtues. I delighted in telling her once that it had been revealed that Robert Burns had had eleven children out of wedlock. I might have made up the numbers just to annoy her – but the effect was the same. She dismissed it as lies and English propaganda.
She had lots of one-word replies or observations, on the surface banal, meaningless to outsiders, but we knew the depths and subtleties and implications they covered. When she said, ‘Help’ or ‘Oh help’ she was not in danger or pain – she was being gently satirical or mocking. It was the equivalent of a raised eyebrow because someone had done or said something not quite decent, like showing naked flesh, making a rude joke on the radio, someone in the street wearing something outlandish. It was a form of non-critical criticism.
It was also a response to someone who was being emotionally over the top, who was gushing or being pretentious. By saying ‘Oh help’, she could never be accused of being outspoken, rude or critical, but we all knew that in her quiet way she was.
She despised anyone who said they were suffering from their nerves, under stress, though of course she would never say so. The worst was a sniff, followed by, ‘Och aye, we could all have a nervous breakdown, if we had the time . . .’ I never saw her cry and if the subject came up, because some other woman in the street had been seen sobbing or tearful, she would just shrug her shoulders. ‘If I started crying, I would never stop.’
One of her more pointed comments was, ‘Anything else while your mouth’s warm?’ This indicated her patience was being well tested by now, that she was becoming fed up with one of us moaning on – twining, as we said in Carlisle – generally being selfish and a pain, i.e. me.
‘Lady Muck’ was a put-down for anyone trying to be posh, overdressed, or fancying themselves, though never to their face. It is, of course, a common expression, used everywhere and still around. At one time there was the male equivalent, Lord Muck, but you don’t hear that today. I imagine all regions, all languages, all times have their own version of Lady Muck.
On our council estate, it felt that everyone was equal, we were all in the same boat, no one was worse off than anyone else, so you didn’t really feel resentful of others. You knew, without realising it, they were all much the same as us. So anyone trying to come the abdabs, to put on a show, not stopping to chat in the street, changing their front-door knocker to a bell, installing Venetian blinds, wearing a best frock to hang out the washing, was not approved of.
Rationing, and the post-war austerities and penny-pinching, helped to create this feeling of equality. Even if by chance you had a bit more money than anyone else, what could you spend it on, where could you go for a flash, showy time? The consumer boom did not happen till the sixties – and not everywhere, and not to all people, and certainly not in our family.
The prime example in the fifties of Lady Muck was Lady Docker (1906–1983), a figure half-mocked and half-adored by the general newspaper-reading public. In the forties and fifties she delighted the nation by marrying three times, pulling herself up from being a working girl into the aristocracy, or so she thought, when she married Sir Bernard Docker, chairman of Daimler cars. She was always dressed to the nines and being driven in gold-plated cars. In 1952 she was banned from the casino at Monte Carlo for slapping a waiter. In 1954 she paid a regal visit to a coal mine and invited some of the miners back to her yacht, where she gave them champagne and danced the hornpipe for them. ‘Who do you think you are – Lady Docker?’ For a time, this took over from Lady Muck in the nation’s store of mirth and mocking remarks.
A lot of my mother’s expressions were Scottish, such as ‘Ah kent his faither’ – meaning, I knew his father. In other words, how can he/she be much good when I know where they came from? Another put-down.
‘You never died a winter yet’: I think that was Scottish, because I can hear it being said in a Scottish accent – meaning cheer up, you’ve lasted so far.
Many of her pet phrases came from the radio or even earlier from the music hall, some with origins unknown, handed down through the generations. ‘Tell that to the troops’ meant you don’t believe them. ‘It will all come out in the wash’, still used, meaning all will be revealed or explained in due course, usually to someone’s detriment. ‘A little stiff from Rugby’ was her reply to being asked how she felt. It always made her smile, as if she had never said it before.
One thing she never talked about, or could ever bear even to mention, was a dreadful accident that happened to both Marion and Johnny, though at different times. For each of them, especially Marion, it clouded their teenage years, and, in the case of Marion, probably had long-term psychological effects.
I was not present on either occasion, thank God, presumably at school or playing football in the street or staying in Cambuslang. Or have I blanked both episodes from my mind as too horrendous to remember?
My mother had a pan of water on the stove, getting ready to boil even more potatoes, when little Marion, aged about eight, crept up behind. While my mother’s attention was elsewhere, Marion knocked over the whole pan of boiling, bubbling, scalding water all over herself. The scream, apparently, could be heard two streets away.
Exactly a year later, the same thing happened again, this time to Johnny, then about six. Marion would never talk about it, so we never knew what her memories were, or what she had been doing, but Johnny has a memory of picking up a stair rod. We did have a carpet of sorts on our stairs, but the rods were always coming loose and the carpet kept getting fankled. Johnny was running around with this stair rod, waving it in the air, pretending it was a sword. He ran into the kitchen, still waving it – and pulled a pan of boiling water all over himself.
My mother didn’t talk about either accident because, I assume, she always felt she was to blame, letting a child anywhere near a stove with water being boiled. But she had four young children, dragging at her apron for attention in a very small kitchen. Perhaps, and I hate even now to suggest it, she had been negligent, absent-minded, possibly with a book in her hand, and didn’t see or hear either child approaching.
They each suffered the most awful, nasty, painful third-degree burns, with all the skin on one of their arms coming off completely. My mother, in desperation, had put butter on their arms, which is the last thing you should do (cold water is best). Each time, having put on the butter, she wrapped them in a towel and rushed to the infirmary – which meant taking two buses.
I hate to think what today’s social services might have surmised or suspected. Being called twice to the same house for exactly the same sort of accident could well have led them to issue some sort of social work order.
Both Marion and Johnny went through the rest of their lives with one arm disfigured. It never cleared up. It was always totally apparent and horrendous. It did not matter, in theory, too much for a boy, as Johnny grew up tall and strong, worked a lot outside, his arms went brown every summer, but it was tough for a girl once she became a teenager, wanting to wear pretty sleeveless dresses.
Even on the hottest summer day, my mother would suggest to Marion that she should wear a cardigan. Which, of course, added to and fuelled any complex she might already have had. My mother, clearly, could not bear to see the disfigured arm, reminding her of the accident.
I think the trauma – which is a word we never used then – might have been almost as severe for my mother as it was for M
arion and Johnny themselves.
All that compulsive reading, always with a Dickens on the go, was presumably a form of escape, a way to hide from the reality of her life, of the situation she found herself in, with a sick husband, accidents to her children. She was not the type ever to show her emotions, which were never revealed in the world in which she had grown up. The idea of being stressed or under pressure or needing therapy would have been laughable. And my mother would certainly have scoffed if we had ever known anyone who was going to a therapist. You battled on, did not share your worries or fears, chin up, keep cheerful, it will all come out in the wash, we never died a winter yet.
I suppose I am a bit like her. I find it hard to reveal or share emotions. I make silly jokes at un-silly times, thinking I am being amusing, entertaining, when really it is my way of coping, escaping, when awful things have happened, which of course they have, in everyone’s life. My sister Annabelle is a bit like me. Appalling things have struck her loved ones, yet she has always appeared cheerful, not wishing to discuss it or complain or reveal. On the other hand, her twin sister Marion, when she grew up, turned out to be completely different, saw no shame in going into therapy, more than willing to share her feelings and emotions.
One of the problems my mother had, unlike me, was that she never had a proper, fully trusted, fully loving confidant. My father, even before his illness, appeared unaware of her needs, or emotions, was never there when wanted. She often talked, with a sigh and a weary smile, of having to get up in the night on her own because Johnny was crying, the twins were both sick and I was racked with asthma, the four of us needing attention at the same time. All my father did was pull the blankets over his head.
She had no woman friends, none she was close to, no relations who would rush to help when required. She had no social life, never went out, not when we were growing up, never had holidays. She had three sisters but only one she ever talked about, Maggie, who had emigrated to Canada many years ago. Tea and reading, those were her two pleasures in life – plus, if she was lucky, and in funds, a bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate, dunking each dark square gently into the tea then sucking on it, licking its nectar, her face lighting up.
She did have a very sweet tooth. I once played an awful trick on her. Somehow I had acquired a bottle of some very bitter-tasting liquid, perhaps essence of lemons, or even some chemical from a chemistry set, and I told her it was really sweet, ‘Mum, it’s like chocolate, you’ll love it, here, taste this, Mum.’ She looked at it suspiciously before very slowly, hesitantly, taking a sip. Her face was immediately contorted. She began spitting it out, almost in tears, saying her mouth was on fire. The more she spat it out, the worse it seemed to get. I felt so guilty. Why had I been so cruel? I didn’t actually know it was as bitter as it was, but even so, I should not have done it. She made a face when she ate normal things like gooseberries, unless there was a ton of sugar on top. So I must have known how she would react.
I don’t remember her ever shouting at us, disciplining us in any way, but she could not have been all that soft and feckless. She got us all to bed at the right time every night, no one took any liberties. Her way was to look sad and hurt, if we would not do what she wanted us to do, till we melted, and gave in, feeling sorry for her.
She never wanted to attract attention, for people to be aware of her, or feel sorry for her (the reason she always maintained she had lots of money). Looking again at those photographs of her when young, courting with my father, when she looked fairly fashionable, she was also rather striking, yet she never felt she was attractive, or was interested in her appearance. She was not helped by her own mother, who convinced her when young that she was too tall and ungainly. On train trips, her mother would make her stand up in the carriage for the other passengers to inspect: ‘Don’t you think she’s going to be a giant!’ She was not abnormally tall; it was just that as a girl she grew quickly. I never considered her as a big woman, perhaps a bit angular, but she got it into her head while young that she was some sort of freak, who could therefore never look nice or be attractive, so why bother.
When she did put on her best coat or hat, to go somewhere up town, such as church or the doctor’s, always looking perfectly presentable, the moment she got home she would take everything off, put her clothes away, so glad and relieved to get into her old horrible shoes and her stained pinny, feeling comfortable at last.
I have turned out much the same. I do have one good suit, which I avoid wearing, as it does not feel comfy, and I am always scared of spilling food on it. I take it off as soon as I am through the front door, flopping into my horrible shorts and stained T-shirt and sandals.
Describing my mother can make her sound rather pathetic and sad, and with age she did go prematurely lined, which didn’t help. In repose, caught unawares, she did look worried and mournful. As we all can. But the real her was bright and witty, in conversation and in letters. I might have been ashamed of her at times, when my smart friends came to the door and she appeared in her awful clothes, like an old bag woman, clutching a mug of tea to her cheek, but on the other hand I did boast to my friends about her reading habits. None of the mothers of my friends, even the grammar school ones, who had middle-class parents, or so I assumed, seemed to read any books, or have knowledge or interest in literature.
I didn’t of course properly appreciate or understand the struggles she must have been having at the time, being interested only in myself, because of her constant reassuring, uncomplaining, selfless attitude to life.
There were no major dramas, no early deaths, no abuse, no self-harm, no suicides, no mental breakdowns, no slums, no poverty, no homelessness, no starvation. So, on the face of it, what were the problems? She always managed to pay the rent, to feed and clothe us, keep us clean and on the straight and narrow.
But really, when I think back, she had a hard life. As did millions of other quietly forgotten mothers, who were only trying their best. I think, though, that she did have it worse, at that particular time, than most of the other mothers around us on that council estate. The fifties were a pretty shitty time for my mother.
11
ENTERTAINMENTS
But we were happy then, oh yes. For us children, for almost all of the time, there was so much fun and entertainment, oh yes.
People who write about the fifties today do tend to go on about the rotten food and the crap clothes, the domestic hardships for women and the freezing houses. All perfectly true, but we who were there also remember the freedom, playing out all day long, going in the woods, building dams and dens, being allowed outside for hours with no one bothering us or wondering and worrying where we were.
In both Carlisle and Dumfries, despite being smallish towns, affording us an appearance of urban life, we did have woods and fields around, but of course the biggest freedom and fun to be had was on the streets, on our estate, playing football under the lampposts or endless skipping games. Having empty streets with no motor cars, that was a huge advantage, though we didn’t know it at the time.
I know that children, on the whole, say they were happy, which is how most of us choose to remember. It is childhood that is making us happy, rather than our surroundings. It was a golden age, the sun always shone. Most generations have always looked back warmly, believing those days have gone forever – and for the worse. It is their childhood that has gone.
But seriously, truthfully, honestly, the conditions and attitudes of today are different. There are new temptations, distractions, stresses, desires and pressures, so many new gadgets which children feel they must have, while the parents thrust their own fears upon their children, about sex and drink and drugs – problems that seem to arise at an even earlier age with each generation.
Marbles – can you believe I had such super fun for hours playing marbles in the gutter? Seems laughable now. You would get run over by a 4×4 in ten minutes if you tried it now. Off all day playing games in the woods, cowboys and Indians with bows and arrows
, gurdling for tiddlers in streams and becks, climbing trees. The police would be called out in half an hour and all the local paedophiles lined up. Making go-carts out of broken-down prams, those old-fashioned sorts, with the big undercarriages and massive wheels, fixed on to biscuit boxes, with a steering wheel – God, some of those were incredible, and so quick. Not be allowed to day, health and safety.
So many of the games were dangerous, the climbing and mock battles, going into empty buildings, clambering up scaffolding on new buildings, hiding in air-raid shelters. We seemed to have cuts and bruises all the time – for which you were always given a dab of iodine, which stung far worse than the cut, then you ran out again.
Even the games girls played could be violent, if you got whacked with one of those massive skipping ropes they tied to a lamppost and then stretched across the street. Once it got faster and faster, it could knock you out if you mistimed it, especially if you were trying to remember the words to all the chants that had to accompany each game.
Football, though, was my first and longest love, playing all day, then under the lampposts in the dark in the evening or in the lotties. It was usually with a tennis ball, for street footballers rarely had a proper leather football – that was only for organised games or school football. Leather balls were expensive and once it rained, they weighed a ton. Cheap plastic balls had not come in. Only the children of Lord and Lady Muck had real leather boots.
The street games would stretch down the whole street, sometimes twenty-a-side, with people joining in, coming and going. There were no cars, of course, to interfere or distract or run us over. We played till the last person wanted to play, even if you were down to one-a-side, or till our mothers finally called us in.
The Co-Op's Got Bananas Page 10