Voices in the Street Page 11

It would have been nice to think that our lives could have continued in this same happy vein but it wasn’t to be. Although I was too young to know all the ins and outs of my parents’ plans, one thing was crystal clear: Dad was restless and eager to try another lifestyle. He had got his job at the Caledon shipyard but he was hankering after the notion of running his own business. He had met another painter during the war years and this man wanted Dad to join him in his shop.

  There was just the one big snag as Dad explained. ‘It’ll mean moving tae Grimsby, Molly. That’s where the shop is.’

  I was busy with my homework but, as always, having big ears meant that I only ever had half my mind on whatever I was doing.

  To say Mum was worried was an understatement. ‘But where will we stay down there?’

  Dad had the solution. ‘Well, if Eh go first, Eh can have a wee scout around for someplace then the three of you can join me later. Still, maybe the deal will fall through.’ He sounded quite depressed by this thought.

  Grimsby. I let the name roll around in my head. I’d no idea where it was but it certainly sounded grim. Perhaps it was some seaside bay that was terribly bleak. I made a mental note to look for this place in the school atlas. After this initial conversation the idea seemed to fade away into the realms of wishful thinking. Dad continued with his job at the shipyard and with Mum still employed at the mill everything seemed normal. Some of Mum’s workmates told of similar restless longings from their menfolk. It was as if the war had made them discontented with their surroundings. I suppose it was reasonable. I mean, if a man had fought in Monte Cassino or Berlin or the Sahara Desert then a dreary wet day in Dundee wouldn’t seem appealing. Yet I was grateful for this calm period.

  One Saturday afternoon after Dad had finished work he announced we were all going to the carnival in Gussie Park that evening. It was early December and George’s birthday. He was four years old. In high spirits we set off for the wonderful, colourful world of the fair. The place was crowded when we arrived, with people patiently waiting in long queues for vacant seats on most of the rides.

  The Hobby Horses ride wasn’t too busy and George was soon riding at a gentle pace in a bright red bus with a large silver bell. Dad had tried to put me on this too but I was indignant. I was too old for such childlike things and would have loved a go on the Dodgem cars. The ride was accompanied by a noisy jangling and a very tinny-sounding tune but when it stopped George refused to come off. He wanted to take the bus home with him. Dad paid for another ride for him while I gazed at the speeding Waltzers. By the time we managed to prise my brother loose from the bus, I stated my desire to go on the Waltzers but Mum said no. It wasn’t for wee lassies, she told me, much to my disgust.

  This made the ride even more desirable in my eyes but by now we had stopped at a sideshow which was presided over by a sinister-looking and very swarthy-complexioned character. ‘Three balls for thruppence!’ he bawled to anyone within a mile of his stall. ‘Score twenty-one and get the star prize!’

  Dad bought us three balls each then nudged Mum in the direction of the shooting range. We rolled the balls down a garishly painted board which was numbered at the foot. I counted George’s score and was astounded to see he had got a score of twenty-one. I let out a loud whoop and the stall-holder came over to see what I was shouting at.

  He took one look and tutted. ‘Naw, he doesn’t have that score. You can’t count,’ he snarled at me while trying to nudge the balls from their slots.

  Fortunately for us, there was a large ferocious woman standing next to me. She leaned over and did a quick count. ‘Aye, he does have the right number. The bairn’s got an eight, a nine and a four and that makes twenty-one in anybody’s book.’ She stared the man straight in the eye, daring him to say otherwise.

  By now Mum and Dad had appeared in the middle of this commotion, no doubt thinking we were wrecking the stall. They were immediately informed of George’s good luck. For a moment it looked as if the man would bilk on his promise of a star prize but by now a large crowd had gathered, eager to see and hear all. He could see his business dropping considerably if he didn’t honour his pledge. His face was a picture as he snarled through clenched teeth, ‘All right then but Eh still say you were cheating.’

  I thought this was the pot calling the kettle black.

  ‘What star prize do you want?’ he asked, desperately trying to save face.

  The centre of the stall was stuffed full of tatty-looking ornaments and other cheap goods but after a great deal of thought George chose an eighteen-piece tea set. It was made from coarse grey earthenware and was decorated with lavish garlands of puce-coloured flowers but we thought it was as grand as the finest china or porcelain. In fact, Mum thought the same. She said it would be kept for best and it was duly placed in the sideboard.

  Dad left for Grimsby the following month, January 1946. He wrote regularly to begin with, enclosing some money or a postal order, saying business was good. Before he left, he had spent Christmas with us. George was delighted to get a big red bus similar to the one at the carnival while I got a tea set. Dad came home periodically during the year, such as when George started school and a couple of other occasions.

  As 1946 wore on I overheard Mum confide to Lizzie that this new venture was proving to be dodgy due to the slump in the home decorating business. The majority of people had either got used to doing without or were doing the work themselves.

  With the frequency of his letters becoming increasingly erratic, Mum grew annoyed. ‘Well, it’s like this, Lizzie,’ she said to her friend, ‘Eh’ve told him tae come back here and get his job at the shipyard. There’s no chance Eh’m taking the bairns tae Grimsby.’

  Lizzie nodded in sympathy. She obviously didn’t want to give the wrong advice but Mum’s mind seemed to be made up. Dad could either return to Dundee or stay in Grimsby, on his own.

  Although I missed him terribly to start with, I still felt really ashamed that it wasn’t like the all-consuming sadness that had engulfed me after Grandad’s death. Over the short time Dad had spent with us I had certainly grown to love and respect this generous, restless and fun-loving father. Like one of his paintings which now hung on our wall, he had filled my life with a bit of colour and pleasure. Perhaps, like the painting which I grew to love over the next few years, my relationship with him would have grown with time. Who knows? The simple fact was he had come into my life too late and he hadn’t stayed around long enough to leave any deep and lasting impression, which was truly sad. I didn’t realise the finality of this parting at the time. Even if I had, I wouldn’t miss Dad in the way that I missed Grandad.

  One day at school, a rainy, bleak afternoon when all the tenements had the grey monotone of dreariness and everything was devoid of colour, Jessie and I sneaked another look at the atlas. If I had thought that Broughty Ferry and Oban were distant places then Grimsby was practically on another planet.

  CHAPTER 10

  One outing that had become a weekly feature during Dad’s short stay was a Sunday visit to his mother, who lived in Isles Lane, a cul-de-sac that branched off the Hawkhill and lay a few yards from Cathie’s pend. I couldn’t recall ever going to see my paternal grandmother before Dad’s sudden reappearance and it all became clear when I realised there had been some family feud between Mum and the Macdonalds.

  To give Mum her due, she never said a bad word about them and whatever was the cause of the feud, no one in our house ever knew. In fact, Mum encouraged us to go and visit every Sunday.

  ‘When your Dad comes back again he’ll no be chuffed if he finds out you’ve no been going to see your granny and Auntie Evelyn.’

  So it came to pass that every Sunday we were sent off to catch the Blackness tram, our faces scrubbed and our shoes polished. We raced down the Hilltown with our seg-tipped shoes clattering and clacking on the pavement like a pair of demented tap dancers before finally reaching the tram stop by the Wellgate steps. When the tram arrived with its wheezing, shuddering si
ghs there was always a race to climb the metal spiral stair to the upper deck, a manoeuvre that caused a great deal of shoving and pushing which the conductor wouldn’t tolerate.

  He approached us as we sat down, his small moustache bristling and his steel-rimmed specs quivering on the edge of his nose. His leather shoulder satchel slapped against his side, making the change jump and jingle inside. ‘Right then, you two! If you don’t behave yourselves Eh’ll put you off and Eh mean it!’ he warned.

  Duly chastised, we tried to sit quietly as the tram snaked its way through streets lined with stone tenements and grey, bleak jute mills. The mills now lay in silence with blank windows gazing out at the Sabbath landscape.

  Although Granny’s house was situated a hundred or so yards from the noisy and bustling Hawkhill, the lane had a rural look with a few front gardens and some stunted trees. I loved visiting this house with its inside staircase with a toilet underneath it and lovely poky attic bedrooms with their frilly, floral bed valances and tiny skylight windows. There was a medium-sized living room with an enormous rosewood sideboard that stretched along one entire wall. In our opinion the crowning glory was the radiogram, an ornate cabinet that not only housed the wireless but also a gramophone. We had never seen anything like it in our lives and I always thought that Granny must be very rich to own something as grand as this. In fact, the whole house looked posh, especially when compared to our tiny two-roomed dwelling.

  Granny was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and she spent a great deal of her life in bed. Her daughter Evelyn looked after her, along with Evelyn’s husband Jack, who was a bus driver with Dundee Corporation. Auntie Evelyn had a tough job looking after the house and she seemed to spend most of her time in the tiny scullery that looked as if it had been a cupboard at one time. I’m sure she must have groaned out loud when she saw our silhouettes through the frosted-glass panel in the front door but I don’t recall her ever showing any annoyance at our arrival, which always seemed to coincide with the midday meal.

  We sat at the table with Uncle Jack and wolfed down a big plate of mince and tatties but always making sure we still had room for pudding. After our meal we were taken through to see Granny who had a bedroom on the ground floor. This tiny room faced the lane and had one of the highest beds I had ever seen. It resembled a built-up dais with its crisply starched white sheets and huge pile of feather pillows. This room always had an antiseptic, hospital-like smell which was in sharp contrast to the rest of the house with its aromatic mixture of old wood and furniture polish.

  Then there was Granny. In spite of her being confined to bed, I always thought she looked quite fierce and intimidating with her dark eyes, sharp nose and gruff-sounding voice that fired questions at us.

  ‘Well then, how are you getting on at the school? Are you good at your reading and your sums?’ she would bark at me, staring intently in case I was tempted to lie.

  I never knew what to say. I was really good with my reading but definitely mediocre with my arithmetic. Still, I soon realised she didn’t want to hear about my failures and I simply nodded dumbly while envying George, who wasn’t subjected to the same third-degree interrogation.

  As well as her keen interest in my school achievements, she was also fond of reminding us about our ancestry which, according to her, could be traced right back to the Macdonalds of Glencoe and the famous massacre.

  ‘In fact, you still have an auntie living in Glencoe,’ she would announce, leaning back on her pile of pillows.

  George was always more interested in the massacre than the heritage. ‘What’s a massacre, Granny?’

  ‘That’s what happened to the Macdonald clan on the 13th February 1692 when the treacherous Campbells killed them after getting hospitality from them. In fact some Macdonalds still don’t have time for the Campbells even to this day.’

  There was a niggling doubt in my childish brain. ‘Granny, if they all got killed how do we still have an auntie in Glencoe?’

  She looked exasperated by this question but maybe she was only tired. ‘Only forty or so of the clan were killed and the rest managed to escape but it’s the treachery of the Campbells that rankled with everyone.’

  Auntie Evelyn noticed she was getting tired so we were ushered out of this cold, clinical room. To our delight, the table in the living room was set for tea and a delicious aroma wafted out from the scullery. For the second time that day we both cleared our plates before it was time to say goodbye to the paternal side of the family and we set off to catch the homeward-bound tram.

  I was barely inside our own door when I pounced on Mum. ‘Granny Macdonald was telling us that we come from Glencoe and we still have an auntie staying there. Is that true?’

  Mum was usually busy when we arrived, either sewing on buttons or patching our well-worn clothes, and she gave me a look that implied our ancestors were the last thing on her mind. However, she nodded. ‘Well, if your granny says it’s a fact, then it’ll be true.’

  Alice Kerr, one of Mum’s friends, arrived one evening and the conversation got round to Granny’s arthritic affliction. Mum was sympathetic. Granny may have fallen out with her but she didn’t like to think of the woman in so much pain. She confided in Alice. ‘Eh hear she suffers a lot of pain. She’s tried lots of different cures and Eh heard through the grapevine that she’s even had a course of bee stings tae help with her painful joints.’

  To say I was agog at this news was an understatement. Then, on our next trip to Isles Lane I made the grave mistake of telling George. When we were ushered into the antiseptic-smelling room he couldn’t sit still. In fact, he almost fell off his chair in an effort to peer under the bed. Granny noticed this odd behaviour and she smiled warmly. It was obvious she had a soft spot for him. ‘What’s the matter, George? What are you looking for?’

  I knew what was coming but, before I could administer a hard kick to his shins, he asked innocently, ‘Eh’m looking for your bees, Granny. Do you keep the hive under the bed?’

  She looked in amazement at him for a few moments before deciding he was talking a load of gibberish, no doubt learned from me. ‘I’m sorry, George, but there’s no bees here,’ she said, smiling fondly at him.

  The look of disappointment on his little face was laughable but when we were on our way home I started on him. ‘What did you do that for – asking about the bees? Didn’t Eh tell you it was a big secret?’

  He was crestfallen but unrepentant. ‘Eh only wanted to see them. Eh thought there was a big beehive under her bed.’

  ‘Of course there’s no bees under her bed! Don’t be stupid,’ I said smugly, with all the panache of being three years older.

  What I didn’t disclose was the fact that I harboured this same notion and thought there must be a beehive in the room with Granny, a huge swarm of buzzing bumblebees under the white valance. I never did discover the truth behind this story of a bizarre treatment. Perhaps I had misunderstood Mum but, of course, I couldn’t ask her because she was forever telling me off for listening to the grown-ups’ conversation. ‘Big Ears’ she called me. One thing was clear, however: to our continual and intense disappointment we never ever saw any bees or their hive.

  But George and I soon had other things on our mind. One afternoon Auntie Evelyn gave us threepence between us and we made for the nearest shop to buy a bar of Highland toffee. She had also given us the sweetie coupon from her own ration book. On the homeward journey, I tried to break the hard toffee by giving it an almighty thump against the back of the seat. A large, steely-eyed woman was watching this ploy. She was dressed in her Sunday best, a suit of navy-blue serge that was too shiny from so many pressings and a large ugly hat of battleship-grey felt.

  She glowered at us. ‘If you two don’t stop banging on that seat, Eh’ll get the conductor to put you off!’

  Cowed by her intense glare, I tried to break the bar by bringing my fist down hard on the golden, brittle surface. That didn’t work, so we had to suck the toffee, pulling it from our mou
ths in a long strip. Mrs Blue Serge Suit glared and muttered something about the younger generation while we slunk back in our seats, trying hard not to laugh.

  Having money on a Sunday was a novelty as we got our pocket money on a Saturday. Our ‘Saturday penny’, as Mum called it, was actually a threepenny bit each but she could recall the far-off days when she had received a paltry penny. ‘When Eh was your age, Eh was lucky to get a penny and sometimes it was just a maik Eh got, especially when your grandad was out of work. When Eh think though what Eh could buy with it! A lucky bag or two sherbet dips. Maybe six gobstoppers and a visit to the pictures in Tay Street.’

  As I listened to this catalogue of goodies I often wished I had been young in those halcyon days instead of these shortage-ridden and expensive times.

  George and I usually spent the best part of the week day-dreaming and eagerly planning our financial strategy of how best to spend our money. The list of pleasures tended to be a long one. I knew that some of my pals liked to stretch their pocket money over the entire week but we liked one glorious splurge, even when it meant going without for the rest of the week.

  Our first port of call was usually Woolworths, where we liked to browse around the high, dark-varnished counters, looking at the prices and trying to get an assistant to climb down from her high, gossiping perch and serve us. I liked to listen to the various conversations under the pretence of looking at the goods.

  On one particular day two shop girls were discussing a very important highlight. ‘It’ll no be long till your wedding, Connie,’ said one girl, sounding slightly envious, ‘It must be a braw feeling, getting married next Saturday.’

  ‘Oh it is,’ gushed the lucky bride-to-be, ‘but what a job Eh’ve had getting my frock, Eh can tell you. The whole family had to put all our clothing coupons together, which means Eh’ve got this awfy bonny figured taffeta frock. Then, as if Eh didn’t have enough on my plate, my fiancé announced he would be wearing his demob suit. Well, Eh soon knocked that out of his head so he’s managed to get rigged out at the Fifty Shilling Tailors in the Murraygate.’