Sandy was at sea for long periods at a time, but he also had quite long spells at home, and we sometimes had a week or two in Portgordon with his parents, who were much older than my mother. Old John Thain, over seventy, had been a sailmaker, and I got on very well with him. He was a couthy man with a droll kind of humour, and he seemed to like me, too. His wife, I don’t think I ever heard her first name, was anything but couthy. She had no teeth, so her mouth always seemed to be set in disapproval. She was fairly tall, well-built and walked with a straight back, lashed into her corsets, no doubt. The fisher style of life was different from what I’d been used to, and I never felt fully at ease there.
The Sabbath was a complete day of rest. No work of any kind was done. Sunday dinner had to be prepared the day before, usually a big pot of some kind of soup, often Cullen Skink, a delicacy made with smoked haddock, milk and potatoes.
Although I knew deep down that I still loved Jimmy, I never once thought of separating from my husband. That would have caused a proper scandal.
Life went on through 1943. One mundane day after another, only lightened by my evenings out with Hazel and the likelihood of being taken home by a young man I wasn’t particularly taken with and who wasn’t particularly taken with me.
They were brief, platonic relationships in the main, sometimes with just a goodbye kiss, sometimes, thankfully, not even that, but there were one or two who got a bit fresh and could be stopped with a slap on the hand. There was also the odd one who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and it was quite a struggle to get free.
Things never went further than that, so I suppose I should have counted myself lucky.
With no young men needing lodgings any more, my mother turned to older men – travellers for commodities sold by nationwide firms, or representatives of various companies, in Aberdeen to check on branches in the area. Dealing with a class above the mechanics, lorry drivers and young clerks, she no longer referred to her lodgers. They were boarders now, or paying guests, but they were quite happy with the facilities she had to offer . . . and the food. Give Mum her due, she was a good cook.
However, it became more and more difficult to find boarders, and they usually only stayed for a week or two at the most and the next thing I knew was that there were four strapping land girls in the house.
They were like a breath of fresh air to me, but a headache for my mother. She had to try to remove make-up and nail varnish from mirrors and bedroom furniture, even from the mats and congoleum on the floors. They were a jolly lot, though and provided lots of fresh vegetables and, even more welcome since they were scarcely available in the cities, eggs.
Breakfasts and teas were accompanied by tales of boyfriends, good and bad, and I avidly listened to what ‘he’ had said and done the evening before. They were certainly not shy, and some of their accounts left nothing to the imagination. That shocked their landlady but I found it fascinating. I was even a touch jealous that my ‘love life’ had not been so exciting. If I remember correctly, only one romance was still blossoming when they left, a few months later.
Mum said she wasn’t going to take females again. They were too messy.
MOTHERHOOD . . .
10
Aberdeen’s worst raid came in the summer of 1943. It started when dozens of bombers came across the North Sea from Norway, sweeping into the city like a plague of locusts. It was around 9 p.m., still dusk as they took different directions to wreak most havoc. Almost every area was affected, churches, schools, hospitals and, of course, large numbers of houses left in ruins.
Even St Peter’s Cemetery, where Granda Forsyth and Uncle Billy were buried, was hit. Doug and his wife lived in King Street, not far from St Peter’s, and I can remember Reta telling me that they had been to the cinema and had just gone into the lobby of their tenement building when one of the bombs exploded almost on the doorstep. When they looked out – the door had been blown off its hinges – they saw that bits of tram rails had landed on the tops of the houses at the other side of the street. In her parents’ top floor flat, a hole had been made in the roof, probably from similar debris falling there.
Damage was done throughout the entire city, and hundreds of people were killed or wounded in that one night. Because no other attacks had been on anything like this scale before, I had often ignored an alert if I was already in bed, but this taught me not to be so blasé.
I had been even more foolish on one occasion about a year or so earlier. The siren had sounded early in the evening, and we listened for about half an hour to the distant thuds of bombs, as we usually did. None of the enemy planes would waste their ammunition on Mid Stocket; there was nothing of any importance near us at all. So we were extremely taken aback when the noises came nearer . . . and nearer. We could hear the bombs whistling down in quick succession, one very close before the noise grew fainter. Strangely, there was no explosion from ‘our’ one, so we presumed that it had been a dud.
Granda, who had been taking his life in his hands by standing outside smoking his pipe, poked his head round the living room door when everything was silent again. ‘I’m gaun ower to see where that closest ane landed. ’Twas jist ower the road.’
Granny, this was just a few months before she died, went mad at him, and did manage to persuade him to wait until the following day. And so, after breakfast, he took Bertha and me across the road, through the gate into the nearest field but we could see nothing. Positive that he hadn’t been wrong – he was a quiet but very determined man – Granda took us into the next field, and there, sure enough, was a huge crater. The bomb had sunk into the newly ploughed soil without exploding.
I suppose we three were lucky in our foolhardiness as there could quite easily have been a tragedy, and a bomb disposal squad was soon on the scene to defuse it. Following the path of the bombs, all of which had exploded except ‘ours’, the experts were able to state that the target had actually been Foresterhill Hospital, not that far from us as the crow (or a bomber) flies.
Foresterhill Hospital was built to replace Woolmanhill, the old Infirmary in the centre of town. The new site was chosen to allow for expansion and was to be something of a showpiece. So modern and innovative, in fact, that the king himself, Edward VIII, was asked to open it in the summer of 1936 – a new king, before his coronation, to be forever associated with the new hospital.
Edward, however, declined the honour on the grounds that he had a previous engagement, and the then Duke and Duchess of York performed the duty. Imagine the resentment felt by all residents of the city when it came out that the king had actually been in Aberdeen that day to meet Mrs Simpson at the Joint Station and take her to Balmoral. I know that I, who had practically worshipped the man before, went right off him then. I felt no sympathy when he had to abdicate. He wasn’t fit to be a king, anyway. On the other hand, I admired the Duke of York, a man I had hardly heard of (I was only fourteen) for stepping into the breach that day. What’s more, he turned out to be the perfect king, especially for a Britain at war.
Fast forward again to a little later in 1943. Life went on with Sandy coming home very occasionally and Jimmy putting in an appearance more often; only now, with Granny and Granda both gone, there was no one to encourage me to go out with him – the exact opposite, in fact. My mother made sure that we were never on our own; she even came to the door with us when he left.
It was into December before I knew for sure that I was pregnant – legitimately. I had not been unfaithful to my husband and we’d been married for over a year. I was only allowed to work until the fourth month, then Miss Murray hinted that I ought to leave . . . for my own health, of course. The thing was, in those days, it wasn’t seemly for girls in that condition to be flaunting themselves in public. Mum, around the same age as Miss Murray, was in full agreement with her, and so I had to leave Van den Berghs. No more firewatching. No more going out with Hazel or Peggy or . . . anybody else, especially not boys.
I didn’t really need the money, I got q
uite a decent allowance through the Ben Line, but I did miss the freedom (such as it had been). My only companion when I ventured out now was my mother.
To hide my broadening figure, I bought a ‘huggy’ coat, a silver grey plush fabric, something like fake fur, but not meant to look realistic. It was perfect in the cold weather, not too bad through spring, but in June, even warmer than usual, it was absolutely suffocating. In addition to how I felt, I must have looked like an elephant in a sheep’s fleece stretched to its utmost.
To make things worse, there was no ‘bringing on’ a birth in those days. The infant would come out when it was ready. Well, this infant took a jolly long time to be ready, and it was three weeks past the given date before Sheila emerged – three long weeks during which I was practically sewn into that huggy coat. I wasn’t even allowed to go into the garden without it . . . in case the neighbours saw me.
My husband had insisted on booking me into a private nursing home – money no object? – and I was in there for two whole weeks. At that time, women were meant to remain in bed for at least seven days before being allowed up for short intervals that increased gradually for the next seven days. To be honest, though, I’m not sure if this was general practice or only in that nursing home. After all, at £100 per week the longer they kept you the better for them. Being treated like a lady was very nice, so I didn’t complain at all.
We were between boarders when I went into hospital, but I was to get quite a surprise when I went home. I had better give you the story of how this came about.
A battalion of the Royal Artillery that had been in Malta all through the siege had been given one week’s leave when it ended. Sergeant Albert Rees, however, felt that one week in Carmarthan with his wife after being away for so long was not enough, so, when they were posted to our Torry Battery for a respite, he asked his CO if it would be possible for him to take her to Aberdeen for a couple of weeks. Told that it would be fine as long as he found lodgings for her, Albert asked a man standing next to him in a pub one night if he knew of anyone who might take her.
He had approached the right person, the postman for our part of Mid Stocket. The man gave him Mum’s name and street number then added, ‘Mrs Forsyth used to take lodgers, but I’m not sure if she still does.’
Albert told me the next part of the story himself, as he always regarded it as extremely funny. He had rung our doorbell and put his request very politely to the lady of the house (he was a proper gentleman), but when she didn’t answer him straightaway, he felt rather apprehensive.
Then she said, somewhat curtly, he thought, ‘Are you English?’
Guessing that she must have had trouble with an Englishman at some point, or more than one, neither of which was the case, he smiled, ‘No, we’re Welsh.’
She obviously relaxed. ‘That’s all right, then.’
Albert and Eiddwen were in the house when I took home my baby, and they practically took her over. They had been longing to start a family, but it was to be many years before we got the ecstatic letter that their dream was about to come true.
As it happened, Eiddwen didn’t stay with us for two weeks; she stayed for well over a year, although she only saw Albert when he was off duty. She wasn’t much older than I was, and we became as close as sisters – closer than I was to Bertha at that time, for she was still at school. Eiddwen would come shopping with me in Rosemount, quite a distance to walk with a pram, and a real struggle coming back up, so it was good to have someone to take turns. We chatted to each other on those outings, although Eiddwen could speak very little English and I knew no Welsh. Bertha and I did eventually learn one or two Welsh songs from Albert, and a few Welsh phrases, but she remembers more than I do.
Eiddwen learned a bit of English and Scots, but there was one word that she could never get right. When my Auntie Ina was visiting, she often said, ‘Give me the bairn for a wee while’, and the Welsh lass was determined to air her knowledge. Her attempt misfired, delighting everybody, and Sheila was henceforth known as the ‘brain’.
One day, Eiddwen asked me why my mother didn’t like English people, and I had to tell her about the failing that many Scots had. There was no special reason for it, it seemed to be an inborn dislike, especially in older people, maybe a hark back to the countless battles between the two countries, culminating in our defeat by the English at Flodden, and followed long afterwards by their victory over Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites at Culloden.
Albert amazed Mum and me on the first Sunday morning he was in the house by volunteering to take the baby out for a walk. When I started to make the carriage-hung pram ready, he said, ‘No, no, just give me her shawl.’
This was a product of my mother’s knitting, beautifully lacy, done on fine needles with two-ply Shetland Floss, and was large enough to wrap round his shoulders as well as the infant. Thus adorned, he sallied forth in his shirt sleeves, into an area where such a thing was unheard of, was actually looked upon as something only the hoi polloi would do. It was also something that the child’s own father would never have done. He never as much as took her out in the pram when he was at home, come to think of it.
Albert was a beautiful pianist – he played the organ back home in the Bethesda Chapel – and both he and his wife had lovely singing voices, so we had many musical evenings, which were repeated when they returned three years after the war for a holiday.
I may as well relate a far more recent little incident here that made a great impression on me. We hadn’t seen Albert and Eiddwen for well over twenty years when we paid them an overnight visit in Cross Hands one July on our way to see Sheila and her husband in Surrey. The next morning, a Sunday, Albert, Eiddwen, their daughter Anne and Albert’s brother (who turned up unexpectedly after breakfast) gathered round the piano to sing for us, hymns, anthems, operatic pieces, changing from one to the other with hardly a break. What made this even more enjoyable was that they each sang a different part – tenor, baritone, soprano and contralto, and we were surrounded by the soaring sound of a whole wonderful choir. It was truly a marvellous experience and we could have listened to them all day. As it was, we had to leave after two hours. We had promised Sheila that we’d be there in the afternoon – and we didn’t want to miss her birthday.
We kept in touch with the Rees family by mail, and sometimes by phone but we didn’t see them again for more than another twenty years, when we flew to Cardiff (via Belfast, would you believe, on a 29-seater) to celebrate Albert’s eightieth birthday. We were accompanied by Bertha and her husband, Bill Jamieson, who had gone to see them several times, by motorcycle in the early years, later by car. It was quite an emotional reunion, reminiscing about their time in Aberdeen when we were all young. Next day, they took us to the house they shared then with Anne and her family. On that Sunday, it was only Albert who sang to us, as Eiddwen was not in very great health. Sadly both have both passed on since then.
I seem to jump back and forth like a flech (a flea with a kilt), or, as my Granny might have said, ‘Like a hen on a hot girdle’, and now I must return to 1944, again. Sheila didn’t see her father often – he was on several long dangerous missions, and Jimmy had gone across the Channel on D Day plus 4 (I didn’t know the exact day until years later), so I couldn’t help worrying quite a bit about both.
This was made all the worse by receiving no mail. Sandy had never been a prolific letter writer – I took it for granted that he’d been kept too busy while they were at sea – but Jimmy’s letters had come regularly when he was in Shetland, Yorkshire and even Brighton, where they trained for the invasion. He had often said he wished he could be sent abroad, and now he’d got his wish and he was in the heart of the fighting. When would he have time to write?
I occupied the long days by keeping my two rooms clean. After Albert and Eiddwen left, Mum had let Sandy and me have the lounge as a sitting room and the back bedroom, which was like having our own little flat. That worked very well when Sandy was away. I paid a rent for the two
rooms, and board for my meals. When Sandy came home, of course, I wanted to make our meals, and as is often the way, two women in one scullery (as we called a kitchen then) spelled constant strife. And there was constant bickering between Mum and me. I realise now that I was selfish, expecting everything to be done for my convenience. I can’t remember ever taking a turn at cleaning the bathroom or the scullery, which I really should have done, and I was annoyed when my mother nagged at me about niggly little things. The resentment built up between us until I decided I’d have to move out altogether.
Finding a house was absolutely impossible, but I eventually heard of a room to let in a house not very far from Mid Stocket. It was empty, so I had the pleasurable task of furnishing it. Furniture wasn’t rationed but it was cheaply made and marked with a double, blocked-in ‘C’, the ‘Utility’ mark. Everything was ‘Utility’ then, even the sheets and blankets, everything you could think of. Having plenty of money at my disposal now, I didn’t even think of buying anything secondhand. Limited for space, I purchased two chunky armchairs covered in brown Rexine, a small dining table, two upright chairs, a double bed and a small bed for Sheila.
Next to my room at the top of the stairs was a fair-sized walk-in cupboard that I was allowed to use. It served as a scullery (I’d to fetch the water from a tap outside), as a larder, as a sideboard to keep my dishes and cutlery, as a place to keep towels and spare bedding. It was also where I had to cook, on a double gas ring. When I think back on it, it was a dangerous set-up in such a confined space.
Although Mum hadn’t been too happy about me moving out, we were still on friendly enough terms, so I went to visit her quite often. Two of her prewar lodgers had come back by this time, Johnny Elphinstone and . . . Jimmy Davidson, and I was quite glad that I wasn’t living there any longer. It would have been awkward to see him every day.
Gift from the Gallowgate Page 12