It was a few years before we could afford to go abroad again. We spent the intervening holidays with Sheila and her husband in Aldershot. This, although the home of the British Army, lies in lovely countryside, and having travelled there by train, we had to use public transport to get around. However, we saw quite a lot of the area, going to Windsor, Reading, Portsmouth, and so on. Eventually, with a decent car, we were able to get there under our own steam, and go farther afield while we were there.
Our second continental holiday was in Austria, flying this time, and at a much higher cost, which for the life of me I can’t recall. I can’t remember the year, either, but it was the time of a go-slow strike by the pilots, and our flight was four hours late in taking off from Edinburgh. This meant that we landed in Munich after midnight, and we saw not one single soul as we went through the airport to board the coach that was to take us to Innsbruck. The café we were meant to stop at for something to eat was closed by the time we reached it, and when we arrived at our hotel, we were shown to our room . . . and that was that. It was two or three in the morning, of course, but it didn’t make our hunger any the less.
We had one week there, and than we were transported to just outside Salzburg. This time we were in a much more upmarket hotel, all rooms having en suite bathrooms. One whole week of this made us decide that it was the only way to travel. We have kept to this rule ever since, wherever we go. Salzburg, of course, was the home of The Sound of Music, and we were taken round the various spots where it was filmed. I was quite disappointed to learn that things weren’t exactly as they had appeared, but it was still a lovely holiday.
Another few years on, both Jimmy and I had been quite ill for some time, and it was into July before we began to feel better – to feel we deserved a real break. As his holidays were fixed in the Trades fortnight, I didn’t have much time to look for somewhere. To be honest, most destinations were fully booked up. The only place I was offered was the Costa del Sol, and Jimmy had always said he didn’t fancy Spain. The lady in the travel agency advised me that waiting would mean losing it, so I booked it there and then. As you will imagine, I wasn’t flavour of the month when I told my husband what I had done, but it turned out to be a wonderful holiday.
Spain was followed, at various intervals, by Majorca and then Ibiza. In both cases, we chose venues that were not yet popular with the public – they are now – and Santa Ponsa was delightful, as was Ibiza town itself, although we were staying in a large hotel at the other side of the water. We had to take a ferry across every day (it cost the equivalent of eight pence) but that was all part of the attraction of the place. We used to sit by the quay in the town itself to watch the cruise ships leaving. There were all sorts of people, and all sorts of yachts in the marina, with celebrities and suntanned beauties (male and female) sallying around with very little clothes on.
Ho, hum! If only we could have enjoyed ourselves like that when we were young.
We booked for a Greek island (Aegina) at the beginning of 1981. I can remember this because my mother suffered a stroke about two months before we were due to go. I wanted to cancel, but Bertha said it would be a shame to lose so much money; there were no refunds paid at that stage. I promised to phone every day, but I could never get through to Britain. It was a lovely holiday, lazy and relaxing, but I could never rid my mind of the worry of what was going on in Aberdeen. As it happened, Mum lived for another three years, paralysed down her right side and confined to a wheelchair, but her mind was still as clear as ever it was.
We were both pensioners when we decided to have one last holiday overseas, but it would have to be reasonably priced. The travel agent checked fares for me, and came up with a wonderful bargain – £129 each for two weeks in the Algarve . . . if we could be ready to leave in a few days’ time. We were ready to leave at any time, nothing to keep us back, but I had never fancied self-catering. I’d always looked forward to being looked after, that was the best part of holidays, and I’d heard horrendous stories of the squalor of some of the apartments offered.
We had to make up our minds there and then, though, and fortunately, it wasn’t like that at all. The chalets were in the grounds of a large impressive hotel, and we could use all the facilities. Not only that, a girl came in every morning to clean for us. It was great. The only meal I cooked each day was breakfast, and we ate out the rest of the time. Cafés and restaurants were really cheap, and the hotel itself only charged us £15 for the one evening meal we had there – which, sad to say, wasn’t particularly exciting.
In between these forays onto the continent, we spent our holidays with Sheila and John, in the bungalow in Ash Vale they had bought. This small village is on the edge of the Army Training Grounds, with lovely paths through the Surrey woods, and we explored much of the surrounding area, too . . . when we went by car. In later years, when driving so far became too much for Jimmy, we flew there, being collected at Heathrow by Sheila and John and driven around while we were there.
We found dozens of superb eating places, although one especially stands out in my memory because of its position. The village was called Friday Street and the original building, named the Stephen Langton was extremely old (another part had been added far more recently).
Langton had been born in Friday Street, but after suspecting that he’d been let down by his childhood sweetheart, he left his birthplace and became a priest. Many years later, when he returned to his roots with the burning desire to marry the girl whatever she had done, he learned that she had died . . . of a broken heart, by all accounts. He had devoted himself to the church again, and eventually rose to Archbishop – an instance of local boy really making good. The tale was sad, but the cuisine and the service in the inn could not have been bettered.
On another holiday, we passed through another village with an intriguing name – Christmas Pie. I did wonder what its origin was, and was delighted to read in a local weekly some weeks after we came home, that some time in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries the land had belonged to a farmer called Christmas, and had originally been known as ‘Christmas’s Piece’. It’s easy to understand how the contraction had been made. I think that whoever had written that article must have come across the village and been as fascinated by the name as we were. He, however, had probably had the time and, being a journalist, the expertise to make enquiries about it.
Since Sheila and her husband moved to Aberdeenshire, John has been amused at many of the names here. Maggieknocketer is one of his favourites, and the villages where the pronunciation bears no resemblance to the spelling – Finzean being Fingin, Strachan becoming Strawn. An old local ‘chestnut’ goes something like this.
After hearing of several places in this category, a Yorkshireman on holiday in Scotland’s northeast came across Aberchirder, and was stunned to be told it was pronounced Foggieloan. It’s not, really. It’s actually pronounced Aberhirder, but it has the nickname Foggieloan – goodness knows why.
Enough! Enough!
23
I gave in to the many requests I’d received for a sequel to The Brow of the Gallowgate, and brought Albert Ogilvie’s children and grandchildren through the Second World War. As always, as soon as it was finished, I gave it to Doreen to read. Not only does she spot misprints and errors (a real boon to me), she gives me her honest opinion of my stories, and she thought that this was every bit as good as the original. Unfortunately, my editor (Ruth is as good a name as any) deemed otherwise. She gave me no explanation for the rejection, so I phoned the agent she had recommended when my third book was accepted, to ask if he could tell me why. As he had instructed when I went to meet him in London months earlier, I sent him the manuscript of Cousins At War so that he could suggest any alterations he thought it needed, but he said it was perfect and passed it straight over to Ruth. If he thought it was good enough then, what did he think had gone wrong when she got her hands on it?
She had already been in touch with him, however, and I got no satisfactio
n from him either, so I asked to have my manuscript returned. He advised me to change the names of the characters, in other words to create an entirely new family, and try it again, but it was meant as a sequel and I found it impossible to change the names. I couldn’t banish the feel of the Ogilvies; they kept coming into my mind and no other names seemed to fit them. I gave up. This box, too, has languished in some forgotten corner of my home ever since, but perhaps I will resurrect it some day – enough time has surely passed since I wrote the first tale.
*
I come now to Waters of the Heart and Louise (another fictional name), a new editor, who suggested as many alterations for this book as Ruth had done for the second and third. This book had just been published when I was asked to give a talk to the children in Catterline School, just south of Stonehaven. Aberdeen was celebrating 200 years since the making of Union Street, our main thoroughfare, and I was supposed to talk about the history of the two centuries.
I didn’t feel competent enough to tackle this subject and pressure of work wouldn’t allow me to spend time in researching it, but I offered to give the pupils some tips on how to make their own stories more interesting. It was a glorious summer afternoon when Jimmy drove me there and, because I feel nervous when he’s there, I don’t know why, he went down to the shore to pass the time.
The children were really good and listened eagerly. I had begun by asking them if they knew what describing words were called, and got them thinking by giving them examples of wrongly-placed descriptions. For example, two advertisements in a newspaper column.
For Sale, as good as new, one green lady’s bicycle.
For Sale, go-car for twins with waterproof flaps.
I wish I had taken a note of the hilarious adverts the boys and girls produced. Then I asked them to write a story, remembering to put in some description, but not too much. The end results that the headmistress posted on to me were extremely good, and I still regret not having time to comment on each one individually. At the time, I was deeply involved in wrestling with an ending for my next novel, at a stage when even a small diversion made me lose the thread of what I had intended to do.
Jimmy collected me in an hour and a half, and took me to see where he had been sitting after having a walk along the shore. We were on the bench, looking down on the sea, when two men walked up the stony path from the rocks. One, let’s call him Fred, asked Jimmy if he’d been taking photographs – this part of the coast is a favourite with photographers and artists – and Jimmy said that I’d been giving a talk at the school.
‘Oh,’ said Fred, turning to me, ‘what was your talk about?’
Hearing that it was about writing stories, he said, ‘Are you a writer yourself?’ Hardly waiting for confirmation, he went on, ‘What sort of stuff do you write?’
‘Family sagas,’ I answered. ‘My first book was The Brow of the Gallowgate.’
His eyes widened. ‘The Brow of . . . Are you Doris Davidson? You’re my wife’s favourite author.’
With that he stepped back and shouted to his wife, who was sitting in a car a little way off. ‘Mary! Come here a minute.’
She looked puzzled as she walked towards us, and before she reached us, her husband could no longer contain himself. ‘Who’s your favourite author?’
Her brows came down in thought for a few moments, and then, looking up triumphantly, she pronounced, ‘Emma Blair!’
My head, swollen with pride, deflated like a pricked balloon, and Fred, his face a picture of outraged exasperation, clicked his tongue. ‘Not her! Who else?’
I didn’t attempt to correct them on Emma Blair’s sex (Ian Blair had recently confessed his pseudonym), and waited while Mary pondered some more. At last, with a nervous giggle, she ventured, ‘Doris Davidson. Is that right, Fred?’
‘Aye, that’s right.’ Satisfied now, he took a snap of his wife standing beside her almost favourite author and let her talk to me for a few minutes before they all walked away, the other man having stood silently impassive during the whole interlude.
That happened a good few years ago now, yet Jimmy and I still laugh at the memory of the stupefied expression on Fred’s face at his wife’s first answer.
My fifth book came about as a result of a leaflet about Cullen given to me by Ted and Lillias – remember my friend from college? They had moved from London when he was offered a chair at Cardiff University, but spent a month in the Moray coastal town every summer, mainly so that Ted could make use of the beautiful golf course. The publicity pamphlet mentioned the Three Kings, huge rocks on the shore that have been one of the local attractions since tourists first discovered Cullen.
As I read, I recalled the times my dad had driven his car off the road so that Mum and I could walk across the sands and inspect them at close quarters. I remembered them as very impressive (which they still are) and was drawn to make them a sort of background to my next story. I consulted some of the many books I had about Scottish fishing – I had been in the habit of buying anything I saw about the north east in bookshops – and Jimmy took me to Cullen several times to soak up the atmosphere.
After my manuscript had been accepted, there was the business of the cover to consider. My editor wanted a photograph of the Three Kings, but there was one insurmountable problem. I had set my tale in the 1930s, but since that time, a golf pavilion had been erected in such a position as to obscure one of the stones from the south side, a travesty, if ever there was one.
However, when we told him our problem, Bill, my brother-in-law, whom nothing ever fazes, said we could surely manage something. Accordingly, the four of us went up and spent a night in the Cullen Bay Hotel, with a beautiful view over the water. While we were in the dining room – windows along one entire long wall – we actually saw a school of dolphins gambolling around a small fishing boat as dusk was falling. We were only a five-minute walk away from our objective, so Jimmy and Bill both snapped away merrily the following morning from every available angle. Yes, we did manage to get a view of the three stones with the unwanted pavilion positioned where it could be airbrushed out by the artist preparing the cover.
When the book was published, I was asked to give a talk in the Buckie Drifter, a modern museum with a wonderful mock-up of a fishing vessel inside. We were in what was actually a conference room with a coffee bar at the back, and there were seventy people present. Jimmy hadn’t come with us, so I was accompanied by a representative from the firm that supplies libraries with their books.
When I had finished speaking, refreshments were served, and the books my escort had brought with him were laid out for sale. Time was also allowed for me to sign them, and to have a chat with those who wanted to speak to me. I was lapping up all the compliments when I was brought sharply back to earth. Two ladies were standing in front of me, each with a copy of the book in her hand.
‘We’ve come to tell you about the mistake you’ve made in your latest book,’ said the one who had obviously chosen to be spokeswoman. She pointed her finger at the cluster of houses in the distance (on the cover). ‘See they two white houses? Well, I bide in there, and she . . .’, nudging her companion, ‘bides next door, and they werena built at the time you’ve written about.’
I apologised for my stupidity, but she went on, ‘It doesna matter. Nae many folk’ll ken the difference. Only them that bides there.’
So we parted on very good terms.
I had mixed feelings when Louise (the fictional name of my new editor) phoned up one day. ‘I love Lizanne,’ she told me, ‘and I’d like you to write a book about her.’
Lizanne had a very minor part in The Three Kings and I had said that she came from the Yardie in Buckie, a place I knew little about. Once again, Bertha and Bill, Jimmy and I set off northwards. Cullen Bay Hotel was fully booked (it was an Aberdeen Spring Holiday weekend) but we managed to get into Banff Springs Hotel, a few miles off and again having lovely views of the Moray Firth.
We toured the area for a couple of days, an
d left Buckie until the Monday. Lillias and Ted had told me about a small cottage museum, which I thought would be my best bet for research; the Buckie Drifter was still quite new and the Fishing Heritage Cottage had far more to offer at that time. It was very well hidden, though, and we couldn’t find it, no matter which street we took, so we made for the Square, where we had noticed an Information Kiosk. The lady there was very helpful, and phoned to one of the volunteers who manned the place.
Isobel Harrison was a gem. The cottage didn’t usually open on a Monday, but she came and opened it for us – it snuggled behind the library, which is why we hadn’t found it. It was, and is, a marvellous place where all four of us would have been quite happy to stay for hours and hours, but we didn’t like to take advantage of our guide. Isobel could not have been more helpful, and the friendship that she forged with me that day has lasted ever since. We still keep in touch and talk on the phone for an hour or more at a time, and it seems as if we have known each other since we were girls.
I did manage to get through The Girl with the Creel, which I look on as my next favourite after the Gallowgate and Time Shall Reap. After it was accepted, Louise said she wanted to know more about the houses in the Yardie, so I phoned Isobel, who lives just along Main Street from the quaint, tightly packed little cluster of houses, to ask if she could give me some details. Because the inhabitants keep themselves more or less isolated in their niche, she couldn’t tell me much, so I decided I’d have to go there myself.
I press-ganged Jimmy into taking me up to Buckie again, and he drove round to the sea side of the houses in the Yardie. I had always imagined, from passing them in a car or a bus, that there were less than a dozen, but I learned otherwise. I had meant to knock on one of the doors – any door – and ask my questions, but there, in front of us, was a lady hanging out her washing.
To explain the situation, there is the main road to Elgin and Inverness, then the rows of houses then, running parallel to Main Street, the road where we had parked, then a strip of grass with sets of posts (it may have been an umbrella-type) and clothes ropes. Beyond that, there was only . . . the sea. Nothing in between.
Gift from the Gallowgate Page 28