Gift from the Gallowgate (6 page)

I have some photos of us at the Aberdeen beach – no longer the draw that it once was, although the council is doing its best to bring it into the twenty-first century and
appeal to holidaymakers once again. I can’t understand why it went out of fashion. There were deck chairs for hire, bathing huts to change in, and, if you didn’t feel like forking out
money for these luxuries, there were acres and acres of beautiful, soft, golden sands where you could stretch out to sunbathe, with space enough to disrobe with a towel to hide your modesty. But
the facilities gradually disappeared; the sands lost their smoothness, even the block of toilets degenerated into something out of a horror film.

But I must come down off my high horse. Like all old people, I am probably looking back to only the good things. There must have been bad things, too. The weather, for instance. To enjoy a
seaside holiday, you must have decent weather, and until this year, Aberdeen certainly could not lay claim to have much of that. The summer of 2003 must surely go down in history as the longest
period with wall-to-wall sunshine, up into the 80°F, high 20°C. If this is attributed to global warming, long may it continue.

When I was four, a chatterbox who wouldn’t stop asking questions, Mum decided that I needed a teacher’s discipline, but the law said that I couldn’t start
school until I was five. The Demonstration School, however, not far from where we lived in Rosemount Viaduct, was a different kettle of fish. It had been established as a training ground for
student teachers, who would (hopefully) absorb the lessons being demonstrated by the fully qualified professionals. It accepted children of four . . . provided that they passed certain criteria. I
was expected to be able to talk fluently to the person assessing me (Mum wasn’t allowed in the room), but as my Granny could vouch, I could talk the hind legs off a donkey, so that was no
problem. I was expected to know the names of colours, fit different shaped blocks into their respective places, draw a man and a house – the man needed a head, two arms coming from just below
the head, and two legs, and the house required a door, two windows and a chimney – all of which tests I sailed through. Perhaps I was over-confident, but that seemed to be what they were
looking for, and my education began in the August of 1926.

Apart from the short nap we were supposed to take after lunch, nothing else of the nursery class remains in my mind. From the following year, we were taught to read phonetically; that is, we
were given different symbols for different sounds. Our alphabet has twenty-six characters, but these do not represent every sound we use, so the extra symbols we were taught stood for
‘ch’, ‘wh’, ‘th’, et cetera. I’m afraid that the only one I can recall now is ‘the’ – an oval with a line across the middle; the Greek
letter Theta, I discovered when I was much older. This was much the same method as the Initial Teaching Alphabet that was hailed as a great breakthrough in the sixties, forty years on.

The ITA was abandoned after a year or so, because of complaints that the children were unable to spell properly. I was not affected in this way because we moved to Hilton Drive when I was seven.
The ‘Dem’ was too far for me to travel and as we were now in the catchment area for Woodside School, that is where I was sent. I therefore learned to spell in the age-old manner.

I had three teachers at Woodside, but the first was by far the best. Miss Deans was patient, explaining things so that even the slowest pupils could understand and made all her lessons
interesting, even sums – though I was never all that happy with figures. She gave us little plays to act, an activity I loved, having always been a wee show-off. She read us good stories, and
gave us other titles to look out for. As a result, I’ve always been a bookworm, reading any kind of book I could lay my hands on. My parents fortunately encouraged me in this, buying me many
of the children’s classics as Christmas and birthday gifts.

When I was ten, Dad bought me a set of Arthur Mee’s
Children’s Encyclopaedias
. I read them over and over; they were like a bible to me, even when I was grown up. I still
have them, very much the worse for wear, and still dip into them for reference.

Miss Downie, our next teacher, was also nice, slightly firmer, which was only to be expected since we were that bit older. The last teacher we had, however, Miss Dow, had a strict rule –
no talking in class. The punishment for breaking this rule was . . . the tawse, known to us as the strap; the belt as the kids called it when I was teaching, although it was only the headmaster who
used one then. They have been banned now, unfortunately. Like hanging, the threat of the belt was a deterrent, yet I must admit to being unable to hold my tongue, so I was at the receiving end of
Miss Dow’s strap on many occasions . . . with long weals up my arm to prove it.

A little story here, before I finish with Woodside School. Bear with me – it
is
relevant. Not long before I retired, it must have been around April or May of 1982, I had an
appointment with my dentist for four o’clock. To get there from where I’d parked the car, I had to pass a small charity shop and, because I was a few minutes early, I was drawn in to
have a look at the books. The place was so packed with people that I couldn’t get near the shelves. I didn’t buy anything, but I did get quite a shock. There, behind the counter, one of
the volunteers, was Miss Deans – the only time I had seen her since I was eight – fifty-two years earlier. She was busy serving, and I was disappointed that I couldn’t get near
enough to speak to her, but guessed that she wouldn’t have known me, anyway.

Half an hour later, face numb and feeling sorry for myself, I was on my way back to the car when who should I see again but Miss Deans. She was standing on the pavement at the corner of a street
– shades of George Formby – obviously waiting for someone. Nobody else was about, but I felt so shy suddenly that I just smiled and said, as best I could with my mouth full of tongue,
‘Lovely afternoon’, or something like that and walked past.

She grabbed my arm to stop me. ‘Wait. Don’t I know you?’

‘You taught me at Woodthide Thchool when I wath about theven, Mith Deanth,’ I mumbled. ‘A long, long time ago.’

‘Yes, of course. Doris Forsyth. I never forget any of my star pupils. Did you make good use of that brain of yours?’

‘I’m jutht about to retire from teaching at Hathlehead Primary,’ I told her proudly, if not altogether clearly.

She beamed at me, a truly radiant beam, making me feel like a tiny tot again, being praised for something well done. ‘Ah, here is my lift. My neighbour collects me on the days I take my
turn in the shop. Goodbye, my dear. I’m so glad to have met you again.’

As the car drew away, I stood for a moment, thinking. She hardly looked any older than I remembered her from my childhood, yet she must be a fair age now. Then, feeling so much better for the
encounter, uplifted in fact, I crossed the road to our Datsun Sunny.

Only about two weeks later, her death was in the evening paper. It was the surname that caught my eye, then the little notice said ‘retired teacher’, and although I had never known
her Christian name, I knew instinctively that it was
my
Miss Deans. No age was given, so I tried to work it out. She had seemed fairly old to me when I was in her class, but anybody over
twenty is ancient to a seven or eight-year-old. She may have been newly graduated, which would have put her in her early to middle twenties then . . . but no! There had been no raw edges about her.
She was too mature, too experienced and had too much self-confidence . . . she had definitely been teaching for years before 1929. Say she’d been thirty then – that made her eighty-one
when she died. I strongly suspected, however, that she was nearer ninety . . . if not over it, yet she’d still had all her faculties.

I was a week late in starting at Rosemount Intermediate School in 1934, which I will explain in a moment. We had moved from the house in Hilton Drive in 1933. The Housing
Department had decided to carry out a Means Test on all its tenants, and had issued the forms necessary to get this information. My father wasn’t the only man who refused to divulge his
income, with the result that there was a large influx of families to the new estates of private housing springing up in all suburbs of the city.

I was still at Woodside School when we moved into the villa in Mid Stocket Road in October 1933 (bought for £640, with a deposit of something like £25 and the balance, plus interest,
payable over sixteen years). Because I was just a few months away from sitting what was known in Aberdeen as the Control examination, which had to be passed before going on to a higher school, be
it a Secondary or the stage in between, called an Intermediate.

Those who didn’t pass had to remain behind, to try again the following year. One girl in my class had failed three years running and left school altogether at fourteen, never having got
beyond Primary 7.

Dad hoped that I would do well in the Control, because he wanted me to go on to the Central Secondary. I wasn’t keen on this; Doug, Mum’s youngest brother, was already a pupil there
and was slaving at homework every night until the early hours.

Dad and I had a bit of a squabble, but I remained firm, so my name was entered for Rosemount Intermediate, where, after three years, a pupil could transfer to a Secondary if he or she proved
capable of it. I suppose Dad thought I would see sense by then . . . and I may have done, if fate hadn’t intervened. I was sent to Gowanhill again in that summer when I was to make the
transition from one school to the next. It was, if you remember, my last visit there. Dad was killed in the early morning of the day after I came home; killed on his motorbike on his way to the
shop to make the mince and sausages ready for opening at eight. The only other vehicle on the road at that time of day was a newspaper van, and it must have been a million to one chance that they
both came to the same crossroads at exactly the same moment – no road-marked warnings then, no traffic lights.

Two policemen rang our bell about 7 a.m. on 23rd August to tell my mother that her husband had been involved in an accident. They asked her if there was a man she could ask to accompany her to
the hospital where he had been taken, and she told them to ask Mr Forbes, a neighbour and friend. His wife came round with him and volunteered to take me to Ord Street to be with my grandmother.
Mum wouldn’t let her take Bertha.

Only then was I shaken awake and told to dress quickly – still not washing off the dirt from my holiday. I put on the school uniform Mum had laid out for me – navy gym tunic,
square-necked and with three box pleats front and back, square-necked white blouse, navy interlock knickers with elastic in the legs and a pocket for a hankie. Under that, of course, a Chilpruf
vest, a hand-knitted vest and fleecy-lined liberty bodice with suspenders to hold up my long black woollen stockings. (Yes, it was summer, but my mother had little regard for changing seasons, and
this naturally became a bone of contention between us as I grew older.)

Mrs Forbes walked me to Ord Street, not very far, where she explained what had happened (a few whispered words) and left me, too young to understand fully what was going on. Mum came there in
the afternoon to say that the police hadn’t been strictly honest with her. Dad had been dead on arrival at Woolmanhill Hospital, and she had been sent to identify his body.

Granny and Granda took me home on the late forenoon of the funeral day – shining with cleanliness, Granny made sure of that – where some of the Forsyths had already arrived. I was
glad to see my cousin Isobel Mackay, my Auntie Jeannie’s daughter, because she was only a few months younger than I was. Before I could think of what we could play at, or amuse ourselves
with, Granny ordered us to sit down and not make nuisances of ourselves. All the seats were occupied, even the wooden, padded-topped stool where we kept our slippers, so we sat on the floor between
the sideboard and the window, not really a very comfortable place. There was only a square jute carpet in the living room, the cheapest until Dad could afford something better. (It remained there
for many years.) The wide surround was varnished wood, but that cold surface was all that was available to us, the only two children amongst a whole houseful of adults.

We sat quietly, watching the stir as people moved around getting the table set and so on, until I remembered that there was a pile of
Children’s Newspapers
in the lounge. Thinking
that they would keep us quiet and save anybody accusing us of being nuisances, I rose quietly and tiptoed through, only to be brought up short at the sight of the coffin. No one had told me it was
there – I hadn’t thought about such a thing – and I stood, paralysed in horror, looking down on my beloved dad, his eyes closed and his hands crossed over the satin shroud that
covered the rest of him, although I didn’t know then that it was called a shroud.

It was some minutes before the great band of steel that had clamped round my ribs and was constricting my breathing snapped as suddenly as it had appeared, and I ran into the narrow lobby
sobbing hysterically, straight into Granny’s arms. I could understand now what had happened and she was the one person out of all the people there who had the time and the experience to
comfort me properly. Hers was the next coffin I saw, in 1942, of my own free will when I went to pay my last respects to a wonderful old lady.

Uncle Jack turned up on the morning of the Sunday after his brother’s funeral. From what I took in, he was worried about what would happen to the shop. He would have to take on a man to
replace Bob, so Maisie would get less than before, because she would be a sleeping partner, not contributing to the running of the business. That agreed on, he offered her £5 for the Erskine
sitting in the garage that had come with us when we flitted in, only ten months earlier. ‘I’m doing you a kindness, Maisie,’ he murmured. ‘You wouldn’t get anything if
you tried to sell it anywhere else.’