Voices in the Street Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  PART ONE

  VOICES IN THE STREET

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  PART TWO

  NEW VOICES FROM A DIFFERENT STREET

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  PLATE SECTION

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  PART ONE

  VOICES IN THE STREET

  CHAPTER 1

  Memories, like fingerprints, are such a personal thing. Those fleeting and intangible yet tantalisingly elusive fragments of a bygone age can suddenly fall into place like a piece from a giant jigsaw, sometimes with nothing more than a smell or a sound.

  I was almost four years old at the time of my first clear memory of Grandad Dwyer. The vivid clarity I’m convinced was imprinted on my brain by the excited anticipation of a night-time walk in the pitch-black darkness. It was the blackout conditions of wartime.

  Grandad had tied my pixie hood close to my ears, leaving the long knitted ends in a bow under my chin and he was now trying to manoeuvre my tiny fingers into the enormous depths of a pair of gloves that were obviously too large for my podgy hands. I danced around in excitement while he patiently tried to place each finger in its proper knitted socket and I could see by his face that my fidgeting was making his job more difficult. In fact it was becoming increasingly futile.

  ‘Now lass, we’ll no get anywhere if you don’t stand still.’

  ‘Where are we going, Grandad?’ I asked, my voice shrill with the thought of the unknown and wonderful delights of this unexpected excursion.

  His face was patient in spite of all the hassle. ‘We’re going out for a wee walk because your mum is no feeling awfy well. After we’ve gone it’ll give her a bit of peace and quiet tae settle your new brother tae sleep.’

  I glanced over at my mother. She was sitting at the fireside, beside the old wooden cradle. She bent over and tucked the well-patched but still serviceable blanket around the tiny newcomer – my brother George. I had been full of delight the previous day when she had appeared home with this newcomer but the novelty for me had soon worn off when I realised he wasn’t the dolly I was expecting. Suddenly, as if he realised all eyes in this tiny audience were on him, he began to cry, with sharp screeching wails that echoed loudly in the small kitchen.

  In an effort to pacify him, Mum rocked the cradle but this made matters worse. We now had the groaning and protesting squeaks from the old wood mingling with the rapidly rising loud howls from this tiny scrap of humanity. It all merged into a deafening crescendo.

  She rocked the cradle even harder but the rhythmic motions failed to stop his fractious cries. While this noisy scene was taking place, Grandad had succeeded with the gloves. Raising my hands in the air with a loud whoop of delight I ran over to Mum. Grandad stopped me and placed a finger to his lips. ‘Wheesht now. Don’t make a din because your brother is trying to get tae sleep.’

  This stern warning stopped me in my tracks but I was puzzled. Surely my noise wasn’t as loud as the horrendous racket that rose from the cradle? I soon forgot about it when Grandad approached with my coat.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked again in a whisper that would have done justice to a crowded theatre.

  ‘Will you just hold your horses and wheesht?’ he warned.

  He wrapped a long scarf around his neck before placing the ends into his thick, shapeless, sludge-coloured coat. Meanwhile I did a silent war dance by his side, almost bursting with excitement yet desperate to keep quiet lest I jeopardised this wonderful forthcoming adventure.

  We descended the nineteen wooden stairs and stepped out on to the pavement of McDonald Street, the baby’s cries echoing behind us in a cacophony of sound, rising and falling in a multitude of strident sharps and flats. The cold December air smacked painfully against our faces as we were enveloped by the darkness. I could barely contain my joy and elation at the thought of the journey ahead.

  When we reached the Hilltown I was surprised to hear voices in the street. In spite of the darkness the entire street appeared to be busy and full of people. Vague ghostly shapes flitted past us, their footsteps tapping noisily against the stone slabs. Snatches from a dozen or more conversations lingered tantalisingly in the cold night air while misty, crystallised breath vapours from the passing pedestrians floated upwards like phoney ectoplasm in a séance scene from a low-budget film. I was mystified by all this activity, especially in the middle of the night. I mentioned this to Grandad and he roared with laughter. ‘It’s no the middle of the night, you daft gowk. It’s just six o’clock.’

  He had brought his little torch with him. In compliance with the blackout regulations this torch had a paper collar around its neck in order to mask the light. This wartime restriction meant that the pale yellow circle of light at our feet was barely visible.

  ‘Eh thought we would go tae the Dudhope Park,’ he said, ‘if that’s no too far for you to walk.’

  His words sounded muffled and distorted in the velvet black darkness and the thickness of his muffler. I had no idea how far the park was so it was fine by me. But I could now feel the cold night air seep insidiously between my collar and pixie hood and my fingers were tingling inside the huge gloves. Still, this discomfort was a mere triviality compared to the adventure. When we reached the park we found the stone wall covered with a glittery white coating of frost that sparkled in the pale watery circle of torchlight. I peered at the wall, my nose barely an inch away from the stone surface.

  ‘Everything is sparkly!’ I shouted.

  Grandad drew his finger along the white stone. ‘Jackie Frost does that,’ he explained. ‘On cold days he paints glitter dust over everything.’

  By now my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and I was astonished that it wasn’t as black as I had first imagined. I gazed up at the clear starry sky. I was quite overawed by the cold crystal beauty of the night and would have loved to remain for hours under the canopy of glittering stars. But Grandad said it was time to go home. We marched briskly past the sprawling dark mass of the infirmary then down the steep hill towards Garland Place. This street, unlike the Hilltown, was silently deserted and full of deep, scary shadows cast by the tall tenements with their blacked-out windows glinting darkly in the pallid starlight. We were almost home when Grandad issued a warning.

  ‘Mind now, when we get home you’ve to be as quiet as a wee mouse and let your brother sleep. If you do that then we can have another treat.’

  There was no doubt in my mind what I wanted. ‘Can we go for another walk in the dark and hear the voices in the street and see the stars?’

  He smiled in the darkness. ‘Whatever you like but only if you’re awfy good.’

  We were climbing the stairs when it suddenly struck me. Surely Grandad was warning the wrong person to be quiet. Judging from the earlier howls from the baby, I was silence personified. So much for sisterly love. All was peaceful in the kitchen apart from the spluttering and hissing noises from the wet coal on the banked-up fire. Even th
e gas-lamp was turned down low. Mum and George were both asleep so we crept around on tiptoe. When I pulled the gloves off my fingers were really cold and tingling. Grandad began to rub them with a rough towel.

  ‘Aye, that’s Jackie Frost again. Every winter he comes along and paints pictures on folk’s windows with his long nails. He also nips wee lassies’ fingers and toes when they’ve been out in the cold.’

  To be honest I didn’t like the sound of this guy at all. I turned my terrified face towards him. ‘Eh didn’t see him when we were out, Grandad. He must have crept up behind me when Eh wasn’t looking!’ I wailed, quite forgetting in my panic my promise to stay quiet.

  This unholy racket rebounded noisily around the kitchen but fortunately the baby didn’t stir. Mum, however, sat up in the bed, propping herself up on her elbow, her slim body encased in a pink winceyette nightgown and her pale face tired-looking under a circle of dark hair.

  ‘Did you have a good walk?’ Her voice was weary.

  Grandad glared at me. ‘Just you lie still, Molly. Eh’ll make the supper then put Maureen tae her bed.’

  He busied himself at the stove while I kept a wary eye on the window, determined to keep an eye out for this horrible Jackie Frost. This was the first I had heard of this invisible creature who crept around nipping you with his sharp teeth and long nails. But I could see nothing of the window because of the blackout blind and for that I was grateful. Grandad filled the tin kettle and I heard the distinctive plop of gas as he lit the grill. Within minutes a wonderful aroma of toast wafted over, a smell that completely erased any thoughts of long-nailed, icy men with nippy teeth. To my dismay I watched as he spread a thick white layer of beef dripping over the hot toast. I hated this dripping but Grandad was shocked by this dislike.

  ‘The world is full of starving bairns. You don’t know how lucky you are to get enough to eat – what with the war shortages and rationing.’

  I’m afraid this homespun philosophy fell on deaf ears and as far as I was concerned the world’s starving children were more than welcome to the dreaded dripping. I also detested margarine; the butter I loved was a luxury we hardly ever saw.

  The house at 5 McDonald Street belonged to Grandad but he had put us all up while my father worked in some far-off boatyard. Dad was a painter and decorator to trade but he had found a job at the Caledon shipyard before moving to England a few months before the outbreak of war. Because this was a wartime job he wasn’t called up to the armed forces like thousands of other men but remained at his original job. A ‘reserved job’ it was called.

  Dad was a vague unknown presence to me – not like Grandad with his kindly ways and his deeply lined face – merely a blurred image on a photograph which sat in its dark wooden frame on the well-polished sideboard. It showed him frozen in time, smiling against a backdrop of the Glasgow Empire Exhibition of 1938, dressed smartly in a bright check sports jacket and a pair of wide-legged flannel Oxford bags which, according to Mum, were the trouser fashion of the time.

  Still, Mum often said it was a blessing he was away from home because there wouldn’t have been room for him in this tiny flat. The kitchen, measuring twelve feet by ten, was enormous when compared to the minuscule bedroom which resembled a redundant cupboard. This tiny bedroom was Grandad’s domain and was so small that the only piece of furniture in it was his narrow iron-framed bed with its wafer-thin mattress which he loved.

  ‘There’s nothing like a hard bed for your back,’ he would constantly say.

  This spartan metal affair was in sharp contrast to the big double bed that I shared with Mum. This took up almost an entire corner of the kitchen and had a thick, lumpy feather mattress with a multitude of mounds and hollows. In fact, it was so squashy and deep that I often thought I could disappear forever amongst its downy depths.

  The kitchen was lit by a single gas-lamp above the mantelpiece, a long slender brass fitting that could be turned in a half circle but which was normally kept in one position in order to preserve the fragile grey mantle. Usually a soft hissing sound came from this burner but occasionally, in spite of our careful handling, a small hole would develop. When this happened the blue flame would erupt and push relentlessly through the grey filament, a long streaming flame that popped and pulsated in an annoying manner – not to mention the patch of blistered paint on the wooden mantelpiece. But gas mantles were as scarce as gold dust, so we had to endure this distraction until the ironmonger received his allocated quota.

  Once, when I asked Grandad how long he had lived in the house, he just smiled and said it was so long that he had forgotten. His grandparents had emigrated from Ireland around 1840. It was actually his grandmother, Mary McManus, who had arrived first, along with hundreds of young girls and women, all seeking work in the rapidly expanding jute mills. Having secured a job in Cox’s mill and lodgings in Lochee she promptly sent for her fiancé Andrew Dwyer, married him and they settled in to bring up a family.

  One of their sons, John, married Mary Redichen, a blacksmith’s daughter, in 1865. The wedding took place on 2 January in St Mary’s Catholic chapel in Lochee and was interesting because the bride was illiterate and signed the register with a cross. Still, it didn’t stop her having a large family. When Grandad was born in 1881 and christened Charles, he already had six brothers and sisters.

  At the outbreak of the Great War, Grandad, now married with two children, enlisted in the Black Watch. Before the war’s end in 1918 he was to witness the trauma, death and carnage of trench warfare, an experience which left a deep and sad impression on him – so much so that he was never able to speak about the terrible sights he had witnessed. It was in the trenches that he suffered, along with thousands of other soldiers, the terrible effects of chlorine gas, or mustard gas as it was called. It left him with a health problem he never really recovered from, at least not fully.

  In spite of this he felt it was his duty to do his bit in this new war and he joined the Black Watch reserves in 1939. However, due to his age and indifferent health, he was discharged in 1941, much to his chagrin. Mum had a quiet chuckle every time she recalled his outrage at being told he was unfit for duty.

  ‘Imagine telling an old soldier that he’s over the hill,’ he fumed.

  Mum tried to console him.

  ‘Well, Dad, you’re sixty-one. Surely there’s other work you can do for the war effort without rushing into a uniform again.’

  As a result of this conversation he joined the Home Guard and was soon on duty patrolling the Tay Bridge.

  ‘Eh never thought Eh would see the day when Eh would be reduced to guarding a pile of metal girders,’ he said angrily.

  Personally, I thought guarding the bridge was a wonderful honour and such was my confidence in him that I just knew the German army would be frightened to come anywhere near Dundee. After all, he had fought them once before and he had the medals to prove it. These medals were in a tatty, imitation-leather case in the sideboard drawer. Often on a wet day I would sit with this drawer on my lap and rummage through the myriad contents, a jumble of old wool, pieces of string and a hundred other delights. The medals nestled together, their striped ribbons still bright after twenty-three years of dark imprisonment. I thought they were beautiful but one day, when I tried to pin one on to his threadbare khaki shirt, he just shook his head.

  ‘Put them back in the box, that’s a good lass. After all, they’re nothing but bits of brass and no worth a maik. When Eh think back tae the last war when we were told it would be a better world for everybody … now here we are, in the middle of more strife, and Eh’m reduced to looking after a heap of metal.’

  His eyes held such a deep sadness that I was alarmed. I gazed at this wonderful man who, in my opinion, was the wisest person alive. I looked at his grey hair and moustache, trying hard but failing miserably to visualise the vibrant deep auburn-coloured hair that he often told me he sported in his youth.

  ‘You’re not old, Grandad,’ I said, gazing at his sad, kind face with its
wrinkles and deep lines grooved no doubt by years of hard work and ill health. I added, ‘Well, you’re no awfy old.’

  Although Mum sympathised and understood his deep desire to feel he was still a useful member of wartime society, she was still bitterly angry by the offhand and uncaring treatment he had suffered, along with thousands of others, after the end of the Great War.

  ‘Don’t worry about not being in the army, Dad,’ she said firmly. ‘Eh mean, where did it get you after you were demobbed in 1918? No work and no dole money unless you swept the snow off the streets.’

  She was referring to that bleak period in the country’s history after the war. Instead of returning home to a promised ‘land fit for heroes’, thousands of men found themselves unemployed and entire families starving or living on the breadline. This sad state of affairs exploded into a three-day riot in Dundee in 1921 when a large crowd of jobless people, many of whom had been cut off from their dole money and were now relying on the Parish pittance, gathered outside the Parish office in Bell Street. On receiving no reply to their complaints of distressing poverty, the crowd grew restless and missiles were thrown through the office window. Three days and hundreds of broken windows later, the riot was over, at least for the time being.

  The Parish council decided to make immediate payments to the destitute families, but this small gesture failed to calm down the inflamed workless people who had the bleak prospect of having to exist on the meagre allowance of under a pound a week. Such was the unhappy lot of the average unemployed family. To make matters worse, in 1923 the owners of Cox’s mill installed new spinning frames which replaced at a single stroke the jobs of one third of the female spinners. Another injustice was that unemployed men were sent out with a shovel to clear snow from the High Street or else forfeit their dole money. The riot was duly calmed down with promises which were merely a thin panacea, and the 1920s and 1930s were two decades marred by the bleak prospects of the jobless masses. Hopelessness eroded the hearts and minds of countless families and spawned the brave but futile protests of the Hunger Marches.