Voices in the Street

by Maureen Reynolds

  Nell was still on her high horse. ‘Did you see that wee scunner Pete running after me this morning when Eh slipped off for a fly puff of my fag? He had the cheek to tell me he was noting all my comings and goings.’

  Bella was also incensed by the gaffer who obviously thought it was time he put a stop to the workers having a quick smoke. ‘Eh just told him to his face that he wasn’t going to put a stopwatch on me going to the lavvy.’

  Poor Pete, I thought. He would have loved a job in Calcutta as an overseer in charge of a workforce of doe-eyed, docile, dark-skinned and sari-clad girls. Instead all he got was a bunch of smokers, led by big, beefy, belligerent Bella.

  As we walked further away from Little Eddy’s, I remember thinking that these women deserved a medal, never mind a fly puff of their cigarettes. They were hard working, cheery and got on with whatever the lottery of life threw at them. I had a funny feeling I was seeing the end of an era as far as we were concerned and, as it turned out, I never saw the majority of these wonderful women again.

  Prior to starting her new job, Mum contracted a chest infection and she was signed off work for a week. ‘Eh only hope this is no a bad omen,’ she said, sounding really worried.

  In the middle of that week, Aggie burst into the house. Her face red with exertion, she was almost out of breath. For once she didn’t insist on the star treatment for the fur coat. ‘Oh Molly! Wait till Eh tell you my news. It’s good and no so good,’ she gasped, trying to regain her breath.

  Mum was taken aback by the sudden onslaught and I was positively agog. I prayed that I wouldn’t be sent out for some wild-goose message while interesting topics were being discussed but on that particular night I don’t think Aggie even noticed me sitting in my comfy chair, my ears twitching and my eyes alight with curiosity.

  ‘Mr Robb and Eh have just got the keys to a new house! A prefab in Blackshade,’ said Aggie. Her face was a picture of excitement while I lay back with disappointment. Just a new house, I thought.

  ‘Our house in Arthur Street is to be demolished and meh man was just saying he would love to live in a prefab and here we are, the proud owners of the keys.’

  Mum was really pleased for her friend. Although her house in Arthur Street on the corner of Dallfield Walk was vastly superior to our old house it still wasn’t in the same class as a prefab. ‘That’s good news, Aggie,’ said Mum. ‘You and your man deserve it. What does Babs say about it?’

  Aggie’s face crumpled slightly and she looked to be on the verge of tears. I perked up immediately. ‘Well, Senga and Marvin will just love it when she comes back for a visit.’

  She stopped when Mum gave her an enquiring look. ‘Och, Eh don’t mean they’re coming back right now,’ she went on, ‘but Eh just know they’ll be over the moon with it.’

  I waited with bated breath for the follow-up. It was clear from Aggie’s disapproving tone that Babs wasn’t the flavour of the month. With her plain, colourless face, thin, angular body and serious personality, Babs had clearly upset her mother. She had a good job as a clerkess with a potato merchant and the thought flitted through my mind that she had maybe absconded with the entire week’s wages.

  But no, according to Aggie it was much worse. Seemingly, love had entered her life in the shape of a travelling salesman called Ron. He had a sharp taste in suits, favouring dark grey gaberdine with a cream pinstripe, purchased from the Fifty Shilling Tailor in the Murraygate, and hair well slicked down with Brylcreem. In Aggie’s eyes he resembled a spiv.

  ‘Eh don’t know what she sees in him,’ she confided, ‘He’s right oily-looking, like one of them dancehall dagos.’

  By this time, my imagination was doing spirals and little war dances in my brain.

  Mum was amused at Aggie’s description. ‘When was the last time you saw a dancehall dago, Aggie? Heavens, woman! You wouldn’t recognise a dago if he jumped out and did a tango with you.’

  However, Aggie with her musquash fur coat, her Californian connections and now a brand new prefab, was not going to be easily mollified. ‘Well, you know what Eh mean. Maybe he’s …’ She looked in my direction before cupping a hand over her mouth and whispering, in a stage whisper as it fortunately turned out, ‘What if he’s already married?’

  Mum didn’t have the answer to that perennial problem and Aggie’s step wasn’t as jaunty as usual when she left. It was as if one daughter’s foolhardiness was blunting the pleasure gained from the other sibling, and the prefab.

  However, as Christmas 1951 approached, Mum was in her new job, while over at Chez Robb in the new abode, Aggie and her man entertained Ron the spiv to Christmas dinner – with most of the ingredients still on the ration.

  CHAPTER 18

  We were in Miss Calvert’s English class, working out the intricacies of verbs, pronouns and adjectives when the news of King George VI’s death was broken to us. A pale-faced, sad-looking young teacher was the bearer of this bad news.

  Miss Calvert then addressed her motley lot with the dramatic announcement, a grave expression on her face. ‘King George VI, after a long illness, has died. Long live the Queen.’

  A sea of faces solemnly gazed back at her and I remember glancing around the group of girls who sat beside me in class 2AMC, wondering what this momentous news meant to them. No doubt they were thinking the same. To be honest, it meant little to me. My life was spent in getting through each day and I had no thought for people who had immense wealth. While it was a sad day for the country, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t identify with the remote and now deceased royal figurehead.

  It was a well-known fact that the late King had undergone a major lung operation and that he had looked increasingly frail. On our last visit to the Odeon Cinema, Mum and I had watched the Pathé News and there had been an item with the King saying goodbye to his daughter and son-in-law as they left London Airport for Kenya on a visit to the Commonwealth. The King stood with uncovered head in the cold drizzle of a February day, and Mum had remarked, quite prophetically as it turned out, ‘Eh don’t think the King looks awfy well. In fact he’s a poor soul.’

  Miss Calvert’s voice brought me back from my reminiscences. She was informing us that we were now in a new Elizabethan Age and she voiced her hope that this second golden age would be as illustrious as the first, which had been a truly historic age producing such notable figures as Shakespeare, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. We were now two years into a so-called ‘brave new world’ and now that the country had a new young Queen then surely things had to get better.

  I was now into my second year at Rockwell Secondary School, a large, attractive, red stone building in Lawton Road. It was so unlike the homely atmosphere of Rosebank Primary. It housed hundreds of pupils in its airy classrooms with their large windows that let in lots of sunlight. The curriculum was also very different from the primary school, the day being divided up into a series of periods, each one teaching a different subject. It was a constant round of shifting rooms as the corridors echoed to the sounds of clattering feet and ringing bells.

  It was strange at first but as time wore on I got used to the routine and often longed for the bell to ring, to sound the end of a particularly hard or boring subject. This would include arithmetic or shorthand, a form of writing to my mind that smacked of hieroglyphics. The variety of subjects was quite overpowering at times, ranging from science and the mysteries of the Bunsen burner to typing blindfold to the accompaniment of a Victor Sylvester record. Or we could listen to garbled chattering of a French family on the radio or sing camp songs in the music room. Oh yes, it was all go.

  One subject I really loathed with intensity was physical education, especially if it took place out in the playground with us running around in our navy-blue knickers playing netball in full view of leering, grinning pubescent boys. They must have sharpened their pencils down to the bare lead, judging by the time they spent hanging around the sharpener that always seemed to be on the windowsill.

  Perhaps if I had
owned a pair of chic, designer knickers then I might have felt differently but during the entire three years I spent at the school, half my time was spent making up a whole host of notes with a multitude of excuses. Some worked and others didn’t. I had no qualms about this ploy because, in my opinion, whoever devised such a costume for an outdoor activity for adolescent girls was either a fool or a sadist.

  In spite of this one bête noire, I enjoyed most of the classes, as did my friend Sheila. We had hit it off right from day one, perhaps because we were alike, not in looks but in circumstances. Sheila lived with her granny and auntie and although she was slightly better off than me, it wasn’t to the same degree as the rest of our classmates. Affluence was beginning to creep around the edges of some people’s lives and this was evident with a lot of my contemporaries who would appear at the school with crisp, new clothes, nice shoes and smart leather schoolbags.

  Sheila played the violin and if physical education was my pet hate then playing her violin at Friday assembly was hers. The headmaster had decreed that anyone with a modicum of musical talent was to be encouraged and sent to stand on the stage in a mini-orchestra before the morning prayers and hymn. In spite of all the intervening years, I can still see Sheila standing almost on the edge of the stage, dressed in her jumper and skirt and white ankle socks, looking awkward and ill at ease as if she hated every minute of these recitals. She freely admitted the truth of this at the end of most performances.

  If she is still playing her violin, I hope she enjoys it better now.

  One thrilling bit of news was the forthcoming coronation of the new queen. The newspapers were full of the coming plans but some Scottish insurgents were targeting pillar boxes with the new E II R logo on them. These purists were at loggerheads with the authorities, claiming that the Scottish postboxes should be emblazoned with E I R because, as they pointed out, the first Elizabeth had been Queen of England and not Scotland.

  As it was, in my small corner, most of the historic events went almost unnoticed due to an accident Mum had at work. She was enjoying her job at the dairy and had made new friends with some of the women. It was very different from the mill. Instead of a dry, dusty atmosphere filled with a million particles of jute dust, the bottle-washing department was warm and steamy with an ever-present moist air. Instead of the chattering clatter of hundreds of looms, the dairy echoed to the constant racket of thousands of milk bottles as they marched relentlessly down the conveyor belt towards the huge milk machines.

  It was a rogue milk bottle, jammed in the belt, that caused the accident. When Mum tried to remove it, the top shattered and the jagged edges sliced deeply into the palm of her hand, making a large gash at the base of her thumb. The first we heard about it was when she arrived back from the casualty department of the Royal Infirmary, accompanied by Nellie, who was to prove herself a very good friend to us over the following years. Mum’s hand was swathed in a mound of white bandages and supported by a stockingette sling. The wound had needed a few stitches and Mum, who hated the sight of blood, looked pale and ill.

  Although we didn’t know it then, this unfortunate accident was to have effects lasting far longer than any of us could imagine. She was signed off work and we were now back to keeping the house on the paltry sickness benefit. Initially, the wound healed up quickly although the scar had a deep red, puckered appearance. It wasn’t until a trip to the hospital clinic as a routine check-up that the doctor confirmed what Mum had known right from the start. Her thumb was now totally useless and she was incapable of grasping anything in that hand.

  She was to be admitted to hospital while the surgeon tried to repair the damaged tendons and nerves. Auntie Nora would have looked after us but Mum thought, because I was almost fourteen, I was capable of looking after George and myself with some help from Mrs Miller. It would only be a few days. At least, that was the plan but it turned out to be a nightmare. The few days in hospital stretched out to a fortnight and then another two weeks as the surgeon tried to repair the damaged hand. He probed several timed for the tendon but the jagged glass had severed it completely and, being like a strong elastic band, it had retracted, never to be found again.

  Mum was in a dilemma. Firstly there were her two children, gamely trying to keep going, and secondly there were her cigarettes. She was almost on the point of despair over the never-ending financial situation at home and the non-existent chance of having a fly puff. The Sister on the ward was very strict, not only to the nurses but also to the patients. She was also dead against the horrible habit of smoking and would regularly inspect the toilets. Heaven help the culprit if she detected even the slightest whiff of tobacco.

  On visiting days, George and I would trudge up endless stairs and along the antiseptic passages to the crisply starched ward where Mum lay under the unwrinkled bedcover, smokeless and totally fed up. Once a week I took the green sickness cheque for her to sign and received a list of chores and bills to be paid. At the start of every visit I would silently pray that she would be discharged but it didn’t materialise.

  Then, a week or so later, she got the bombshell. I could see from her face when I entered the ward that something was amiss. I thought it was something medical and was almost afraid to approach the bed but it turned out to be another financial headache, that old bugbear. Before I had time to sit down on the hard, uncomfortable chair, she said, ‘Because Eh’ve been in hospital all this time, the hospital wants to deduct some money from the insurance to pay for my stay here.’

  I was appalled at this statement because the sickness benefit money wasn’t covering everything and some bills were being left unpaid.

  Her face was red and she looked distressed. A young nurse arrived and pushed a thermometer under Mum’s tongue. ‘Now, you’ll have to stop worrying as your temperature is high and Sister doesn’t want you to get an infection,’ she said, while looking at the slim glass tube in her hand.

  Mum was still vexed. ‘Eh can’t help worrying, nurse. It’s this awfy letter Eh got from the insurance folk,’ she said. Then she explained all the sorry state of our finances. ‘And the worst thing is there’s Mrs What’s-her-name in the next ward. Her man is well off but, because she doesn’t work, the hospital is no taking a penny off her. It’s no fair.’ Mum, who was rarely a complaining kind of person, was now in full flow over the financial injustices of the insurance world and the National Health Board in particular.

  The young nurse was very sympathetic. ‘I would see the almoner about this, if I were you, especially as it’s causing hardship.’

  I almost told her this was the understatement of the year. It was bad enough living on the breadline but if this sum was deducted every week then we would be in dire poverty. After the nurse left, Mum decided to bypass the almoner, making up her mind to go straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, namely the National Insurance Office on the junction of Tay Street and the Overgate.

  To be more precise, I was to go, post-haste after school the following day. My heart sank at this request. I hated visiting this building which had been erected at the conception of the NHS in 1948–49. This single-storey brick-built building was always overflowing with people, no matter what time of day you went there.

  The waiting room chairs lay in pristine rows and faced the various desks of the clerks. Sometimes, if you were lucky, all the desks would be manned and the waiting motley band of sick, newly well, infirm or just downright work-shy would be dealt with quickly. A multitude of human problems and frailties would all be neatly documented on duplicate or triplicate forms to be later filed away in the far blue yonder of a back room, probably in some pigeon-holed cabinet. We were now truly a form-filling nation.

  The following day I trudged up the street to the building and was dismayed to see most of the desks unmanned. I settled down for a prolonged stay. Sitting beside me was a family with a husband who clearly suffered from a debilitating illness. He weighed about seven stone and had a thin, drawn, yellow-tinged face with a slender wrinkle
d neck. His wife, on the other hand, looked a picture of health with red glowing cheeks and contrasted sharply with the emaciated, shrivelled-up man at her side. Two small children sat quietly beside them and they looked like miniature versions of the woman, which must have been a blessing.

  The weary-eyed woman at the desk called out sharply, ‘Next please!’ and I went forward, prepared to do battle over the letter in my hand. Mum had said I was to be adamant that we couldn’t possibly live on a reduced amount. But the clerk was merely there to take down all the details and it wasn’t her job to reach any decision on anyone’s benefit. At least that was what I was told.

  I wasn’t looking forward to relaying this news to Mum on the next visiting day but she accepted it better than I anticipated. This was because she had been told she could go home in a couple of days. As it was, she got home the following afternoon, down in the dumps because her hand was virtually useless and there was nothing that could be done surgically for it. But she was glad to be home where she could sit with her favourite detective novels and a cigarette.

  Fortunately, we never heard another word about hospital charges. Maybe the form disappeared between pigeonholes or whatever receptacle it had been destined for, preferably the waste-paper bin. Nellie came round with some good news. The foreman at the dairy had been pushing for Mum to get her wages every week. As he said, the accident had happened at work so now she would be paid until able to return to work.

  Nellie also brought two tickets for the first house at the Palace Theatre for the following Saturday. ‘Eh thought we could have a night out but just if you feel up to it,’ she said.

  Mum, who loved the variety theatre and the pictures, was thrilled. Sometimes both of us would go to the Palace Theatre for a treat but the last time had been years ago.