Gift from the Gallowgate

by Davidson, Doris;

  Mum often laughed about one particular incident but I can’t truthfully say that I remember it. It was during a silent film featuring ‘Baby Peggy’ (the Shirley Temple of her day) who often watches her Daddy shaving. One day when nobody is looking, she goes to the bathroom, stands on a chair to reach the shelf, and lifts his cut-throat razor. At that point, apparently, pre-school, I sprang to my feet and shouted, ‘No, Baby Peggy! No, don’t! You’ll cut yourself!’

  I had watched my own father shaving, and he had often nicked his face with his open razor, so I knew how lethal it could be. Anyway, I think the usherette came and warned my parents to keep me quiet, otherwise we’d have to leave. This was a threat I dared not flout, so I sat with my hands over my mouth for the rest of that adventure of my favourite film star.

  There were no trips on Saturdays. The butcher’s shop remained open all day; didn’t close until nearly nine, sometimes. There were always women who left it until the last moment to buy in their Sunday lunch – probably their men didn’t get paid until they finished work on Saturday afternoon and stayed in the pub until they reeled home fit only for bed. The Gallowgate was a poor working class area, with a diversity of employment for the unskilled – in the shipyards, the railway and the quarries, delivering coal and other commodities by cart. There were, too, some jobs in the comb works, glove factory, paper mills and Grandholm Mill, where they made Crombie cloth and tweed.

  In the 1920s and ’30s, of course, even those who had served their time and were qualified tradesmen found themselves unemployed, having to sign on for money from the ‘Dole’ (‘the burroo’ in local terms) or the Labour Exchange to give it its proper title. For some, that was a disgrace, as, even more so, was applying to the parish for help. It was a time for Soup Kitchens, and although I only know of the one in Loch Street, which was still going into the sixties, there may have been others.

  The two universities – Marischal College and King’s College – were only for those whose parents could afford to keep them there, but for some of those fortunate enough to be given that chance, there was no post open for them when they graduated, which is why so many left their home town and looked further afield – England, of course, and the Dominions.

  But that is by the by. None of the Forsyths attended a university. Only the very rich attained that height. Clever boys from poorer homes stood no chance unless someone took an interest in them – a teacher or minister, perhaps, or a father’s boss – and financed them to a certain extent.

  *

  The year before I started school, Dad rented a big wooden shed at the side of a lovely granite house outside Kintore. It wasn’t more than ten miles from Aberdeen, but it was like we were in another land, another era. The house belonged to two elderly sisters, the Misses Taylor, who looked after their brother Joe. He had been gassed in the war, the Great War, that is. World War II was in the far distant future.

  Joe did all the dirty jobs about the place, cleaning out the hen runs, doing what had to be done to the dry privy, making sure the midden didn’t spill over, as well as growing loads of vegetables – tatties, carrots, neeps, leeks, shallots, peas and broad beans. He also looked after the rambling strawberry plants, the raspberry canes, the gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes, so that his sisters could make hundreds of jars of jam for the winter. He loved jam, did Joe, and was often to be seen with a jam sandwich, what we called a doorstep, the slices of bread were so thick. There were no sliced loaves then. A loaf was bought, often still warm from the bakehouse, and wrapped in tissue paper to be carried home.

  The sisters kept the front garden looking beautiful with all kinds of flowers – peonies, red hot pokers, rambler roses, pansies, hollyhocks, antirrhinums, nasturtiums – a mass of strong colours, and honeysuckle round the glazed front door, so that the evening air held a lovely perfume, helped by the night-scented stock.

  These elderly ladies had also to do the housework and keep things in general looking spick and span. They didn’t wash their bedding in spring like most housewives did, but waited until the weather was more predictable. It turned out, therefore, that we were there when the blanket washing got under way, and I was allowed to tramp them in a big tub outside – a most enjoyable task – and to help to put them through the big mangle set up by the back door before they were pegged out on the washing line. Mind you, although the two Misses Taylor were always profuse in their thanks, I don’t think I could actually have done much to help them.

  At first, I was a little afraid of their brother. Joe shuffled about, never saying anything, just a grunt now and again, but I liked to watch the swing of his arms as he chopped sticks, or dug into the pile of coal to fill the scuttle for the fireside. The fire had to be lit every day, to heat water, to cook, and so on, so although this was the middle of summer, he never removed his khaki jacket. Sometimes whole rivers of sweat poured down his face, but all he did was to wipe them off with his sleeve.

  After a while, he began to smile at me, to stand in such a position that I could see what he was doing, even holding out the axe to let me have a try – I didn’t manage – and letting me hold the bowl while he collected eggs. The hens had a habit of laying wherever they felt like it, free range as it’s called now, and it sometimes took quite a time to find all their hidey-holes. By the end of our first stay with the Taylors, Joe and I were best pals. Mum was anything but happy about the association, I don’t think she lost her initial fear of him, but my dad laughed off her doubts.

  ‘He’s just like a child himself. He won’t touch her.’

  Joe never did touch me – not that year or the next.

  I can’t put a month to those idylls in the countryside. I have photographs of me helping with the haymaking, and in these parts, harvest isn’t until well into August. It could be that the second of our sojourns there, each lasting at least a month, was at a different time from the first, but in both cases, Dad went to work in Aberdeen on his motorbike. I don’t know how my mother filled her days on her own. I was too busy doing what I was doing, what I liked doing, to think about anybody else – selfish brat that I was! Maybe she rebelled at last, for our second stay was our last, though I always have happy memories of the Taylors.

  I was newly ten when I was sent to my Granny’s sister at Gowanhill, a few miles from Fraserburgh, for the whole six weeks of the school summer holidays. I can’t really recall why, though I’ve the feeling that Granny thought I’d been looking a bit peaky. I had lovely auburn hair (I had, honestly, long and curly until it was cut), and the very fair skin that goes with it. I doubt if I was really under the weather, but Mum’s Auntie Teenie agreed to have me and that was it.

  Uncle Jimmy Christie (pronounced Chrystie by his neighbours, which I always thought was swearing) was grieve at the farm, and we had visited them a few times before, so they weren’t complete strangers to me. I did feel a little weepy when the car turned a corner and just disappeared, but Auntie Teenie wasn’t one to waste sympathy where it wasn’t needed. ‘Get your case unpacked’, she told me, brusquely, ‘and get yoursel’ washed. You’ll be sleepin’ ben the hoose in Jean’s bed, so you’ll be a’ richt there.’

  I did as I was told. I washed my face, hands and knees in the basin set out for me in the back porch, and was made to scrub my neck before I was shepherded into the tiny room which was to be mine for the next six weeks. In spite of the woman’s assurance, I wasn’t all right in the bed. I had a problem getting into it for a start, it was so high, then Auntie Teenie blew out the candle and I was left alone . . . in the dark . . . on a bed that moved with every breath I took. Not only that, something bit my arms and legs when I shifted them. I felt the mattress gingerly, wondering what kind of beasties were there, and wasn’t altogether relieved to find that it was stuffed with what felt like stalks of corn – the cause of what I’d imagined to be insect bites. I later found this to be what they called a ‘caff’ or chaff bed. I got to sleep eventually and also got accustomed to the animated mattress and having to pummel it eve
ry morning to raise it from the dead.

  There were a few children in the same row of cottages and they were friendly up to a point, but they were much younger. Also, don’t forget that I came from the big city – a toonser, in other words – and was related to the grieve, the foreman, whose word was law. But Uncle Jimmy didn’t scare me. He took me under his manly wing at the farm, letting me mash neeps for the cows in a big machine that took all my strength to work. He let me try my hand at milking once, but I didn’t care for the feel of the cow’s udder. That and the lash round the face I got from her sharny, smelly tail was enough for me. I was definitely not going to be a milkmaid when I grew up.

  Uncle Jimmy gave me a demonstration one afternoon of something I’ll never forget. I was watching as he scythed down some thrustles (thistles) when he suddenly said, ‘See this, noo.’

  He pointed to an insect that had landed on the back of his hand and was now gorging itself on his blood. I stood transfixed as the little body grew redder and redder, and rounder and fatter, until it suddenly toppled over and fell to the ground, dead as a doornail.

  ‘It’s a gleg,’ Uncle Jimmy told me, ‘and it damn well serves him richt.’

  I’ve never felt any inclination to find out if it was only the man’s weather-beaten hand that was lethal or if my blood would have had the same effect, and I never will. Losing a glegful of blood would be the death of me these days, not the gleg. If you are wondering what a gleg is, I have it on good authority that it is really a horsefly.

  I did make one really good friend at Gowanhill, though – the orra loon – that is, the boy who did all the dirtiest, lowliest jobs about the place. I can’t remember his name, but he was quite flattered that I followed him around like a puppy, and showed me all sorts of things. He taught me how to whistle with two fingers in my mouth; how to put a broad blade of grass between my two thumbs and get a whistle from that; how to walk, then run, along the midden wall without falling in. The whistlings took me much practice to perfect, but walking the midden had to be mastered right away. I was terrified of falling in the middle of all that muck – and I never did. Isn’t it marvellous what fear can make you do?

  The best thing he taught me, the pièce de résistance, was to fill a pail to the brim with water and then spin round, faster and faster with it held out at right angles to my body . . . without losing one drop. That was a marvellous achievement, but I never had occasion to show my prowess to anybody else. There was nowhere in Aberdeen that had the facility for such an exhibition. Nor have I ever had any cause to try out my powers of whistling.

  Gowanhill had a shop attached to it, run by Mrs Sutherland, the farmer’s wife. Auntie Teenie often sent me up for something, probably just to get me out from under her feet, but one errand in particular sticks in my mind. ‘Jist ask for a half pun o’ tae’, she instructed me.

  I ran to do her bidding – she wasn’t a bully by any means, but it was best not to get up her wrong side – and Mrs Sutherland beamed when I went in. ‘What can I do for you today, Doris?’ she asked, seeing that I wasn’t brandishing a paper list.

  ‘I’ve to ask for a haffpunnotay,’ I told her, unwittingly stringing the unfamiliar words together, ‘but I don’t know what it is.’

  She burst out laughing. It must have sounded funny me using mangled Doric words in my normally perfect English, but she managed to explain that what my aunt wanted was half a pound of tea. It was mainly through living in Gowanhill that I became so familiar with the Doric that I often use in my writing, although my Granny and Granda helped a lot, as well. Mum used to frown at them for speaking so broadly, but it was so natural to them that I lapped it up.

  I did enjoy my stay in the cottar house, but I was still glad to go home. I hadn’t felt homesick once while I was away, but the minute I set foot inside my own house again, I began to cry.

  I had the surprise of my life that October. I was presented with a baby sister. At first, I loved the idea of playing with a moving, breathing doll, but I soon changed my mind about that. This ‘doll’ wouldn’t stop yelling its head off if I picked it up, and I was ordered to leave it alone. Besides, it was red-faced and not particularly pretty, but it improved as the weeks passed and I got around to thinking of it as her, she . . . or even Bertha. I was soon forced to admit that she was quite bonnie after all.

  The only thing was, she got all the attention. Even Granny cooed over her, and sang songs to her like she used to do for me.

  Far does my bonnie Bertha lie, Bertha lie, Bertha lie?

  Far does my bonnie Bertha lie, the caul’ caul’ nichts o’ winter oh?

  She lies in her Granny’s bosey, bosey, bosey,

  She lies in her Granny’s bosey, the caul’ caul’ nichts o’ winter oh.

  It really hurt that Bertha was now being held in my Granny’s bosey, although she did take me on her knee sometimes. ‘You needna be jealous o’ your wee sister,’ she would say. ‘Your Mammy and Daddy still love you as much as ever, and so does your Granda and me.’

  I wasn’t too happy about going to Gowanhill the next summer. Baby Bertha would have Mummy and Daddy all to herself, and they might not want me back at the end of the holidays. On the other hand, I was glad to get away from nappies hanging all over the house when it was raining, and having to be quiet if the ‘wee darling’ was sleeping.

  Nothing had changed at Gowanhill. Uncle Jimmy still took me to the farm with him occasionally so I’d be out of Auntie Teenie’s way, and on the whole, I enjoyed myself. There was a Sunday School picnic on one of the Saturdays I was there, and although I didn’t attend the Sunday School, just the church, I was allowed to accompany the other cottar bairns.

  This was a strange experience. The minister tended to the needs of two different parishes – Rathen (centred in the church the Christies attended) and the joint fishing villages of Inverallochy and Cairnbulg. He usually held his service in the country in the forenoons one week and afternoons the next, allowing him to go to the coast in the opposite mornings and afternoons. I wish I could have sat in on at least one service at the seaside. How did the two sets of villagers behave towards each other as one congregation, I wondered?

  As far as I was concerned they were all one, because there was only the width of a road separating them, but the ‘Bulgers’ didn’t like to be associated with the people of Inverallochy, and vice versa. The picnic was therefore divided into three factions, two of fisher folk and one lot of country bairns, including me by adoption.

  The two dialects were completely diverse, the seafaring families inclined to add ‘ickie’ to every name and sound the ‘k’ in words like knee and knife. Here is a made-up example. ‘Johnicke’s cut his k-nee wi’ a k-nife.’ I was intrigued, and spent most of the afternoon trying to listen to them speaking. It was quite difficult, since those from each place kept to themselves, each group sitting apart from the other two.

  On the last Saturday of that holiday, there was a wedding to attend. Meg Christie was marrying her lad. Mum had bought a lovely lemon taffeta dress for me, with a dear little cape round the shoulders and frills round the sleeves and the hem. It sounds horrible, but I was very proud of it. After the actual ceremony in the house, while the adults were drinking a toast to the happy couple and paying no attention to me, I remembered a tree along the road a bit where the branches were enticingly low.

  Without a thought to my finery, I tiptoed off, scaling up that tree like the tomboy I had become when I was in the country. Alas, during my spell as a pirate scanning the horizon, I fell off the rigging and trailed back to my mother, crying my eyes out because of my bleeding knee. Mother-like, she was only interested in the three-cornered tear in my dress. Enough said.

  My last holiday at Gowanhill was when I was twelve. The big house next door had new occupants, including two girls, one a little older than I was, and the other a little younger. They were tomboys par excellence and we spent every day, all day, doing things we shouldn’t. We never forgot to go back for something to eat, of
course, but we had a marvellous time. Auntie Teenie was so relieved to have me taken off her hands that she got out of the habit of checking if I had washed myself, and so I made a few dummy splashes with my hands in the basin every morning and night, without letting the water touch any other part of me. I only had to be careful on Sundays, because she inspected every inch of me before we went to church.

  Church was the Church of Scotland at Rathen, over the hill from Gowanhill, and in the pew in front of the Christies there always sat a very tall man, so tall that I couldn’t see the minister even when he was up in the pulpit. This meant that I had to find somewhere else to focus my attention. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the man’s head, completely devoid of hair (long before this became fashionable and probably due to alopecia) and bright red from constant exposure to the weather, was a skating rink for flies – attracting them in swarms. Time flew much quicker for me that year than normal, though I still can’t believe that he wasn’t aware of their antics.

  At last, the service ended and we set off over the hill again, Uncle Jimmy looking most uncomfortable in his Sunday suit and the high collar that his wife starched until it was so stiff and hard that it looked to be made of cardboard. His bowler sat ill upon his bushy grey locks and his shoes, polished until I could see my face in them, clearly hurt his feet, for he grimaced with almost every step. Auntie Teenie wore a long black coat atop her Sunday sprigged frock, and her laced shoes seemed to be bothering her, as well. She must have suffered from corns or bunions, maybe both, but she would never admit to any aches or pains.

  On the Sunday my parents were coming to take me home, of course, we didn’t go to church. Auntie Teenie was preparing an impressive meal for them, so I sneaked out to my friends without washing at all, as I had done every day that week. When I went back at dinnertime, the Erskine was there at the door. Mum and Dad had arrived . . . and Bertha, too. I was surprisingly pleased to see her.