Gift from the Gallowgate (17 page)

This process had to be repeated three or four times until everything was hanging on the line. Sometimes, when white towels still had stains, I laid them flat on the grass still dripping with
soapy water. This usually took out stains, particularly if it was sunny, and it was safer than using bleach, a hint picked up from my mother with regard to nappies.

My suspicions that Sandy wasn’t the fatherly type proved well founded. As soon as he decently could after breakfast, he was off on some excuse or other, dressed in one of the
light-coloured suits he favoured, which made him stand out from the usual navy blues, parson greys and browns other men wore. I’m quite sure that he wasn’t involved with another woman,
but he did like to meet people, to go into a bar and chat with other men, to go into a café and have a laugh with the waitresses. I resented being left alone so much. After all, I was on my
own with our daughter when he was at sea, and I felt that he should take over some of the responsibility when he was at home.

Storm clouds were gathering. I was now at a stage where, like Rhett Butler, I didn’t give a damn. Why should I sit in every evening, knitting, sewing, reading or listening to the wireless,
when my husband hadn’t taken me out once while he was home?

(Incidentally, I had gone to see
Gone With the Wind
by myself when I was eight months pregnant with Sheila – a marathon four-hour sit. Thank goodness there was an interval.)

When Jimmy started coming to see me, giving me books he knew I’d like to read, I welcomed him with open arms, figuratively speaking. I did wonder sometimes why Johnny had never come back
– I missed the motorcycle runs – but I didn’t care too much. And so things went on for some weeks.

The scene is set, isn’t it? A small room, a little girl asleep in her crib, a double bed and a young man and woman trying not to show how they felt about each other. At first, we did sit
in the armchairs and discuss books we’d enjoyed reading and it was just a goodbye kiss at the door. That couldn’t last, of course.

Books were forgotten eventually. The kisses began when he came in and things just built up without us as much as thinking that what we were doing was wrong. Very, very wrong. As wrong as it
could possibly be.

Nemesis had to come. Jimmy had told Johnny the first time he came to see me, which was why the motorcycle runs stopped, then he foolishly confided that we loved each other. Johnny was well known
as a ladies’ man, so this news hadn’t really upset him, but his pride probably got a knock. Whatever prompted it, he ‘clyped’ to my mother; told her exactly what was going
on and sat back to watch the fireworks.

I needn’t go into great detail. Mum had a blazing row with Jimmy and told him to leave her house. Then she came to tell me what she thought of my ‘carry-ons’, and forbade me to
see Jimmy again. Also, she said she would tell Sandy the minute he came home. Which she did.

I should have been ashamed of myself when my husband confronted me, but I wasn’t. I was sorry I’d hurt him – I hadn’t planned it, it had just happened; the usual excuse,
I suppose – but that was us finished.

I don’t like re-living that horrible time. I know I had only myself to blame for being in such a situation, but it’s easy to be wise after the event. In any case, I don’t think
my marriage to Sandy would have lasted very long anyway. We weren’t really suited and we didn’t have the same interests; he was a born bachelor, finicky, moody and only used to mixing
with his own kind of people. I was inclined the other way; I could, with my usual gift of the gab, hold a conversation with anybody. It was better that we split up then than go on until we came to
hate each other.

I didn’t know until my mother told me later that Sandy had gone back to Mid Stocket and told her what he thought of me. I was all that was bad; a whore enticing men to come to bed with me,
but I needn’t think I’d get away with it. He would never give me a divorce. Jimmy Davidson would never be able to marry me, though he waited till his hair was white as snow and
he’d a beard right down to his feet. I think this is what tempered Mum’s anger at me . . . a little bit.

Really upset after she told me what had happened, I still had to face up to everything. My allowance was stopped. Even when Mum and Auntie Ina both told me I should write to the Ben Line and
claim something for Sheila, I wouldn’t. I had hurt Sandy enough already, and in view of what he’d said about me, I wanted nothing more to do with him.

The thing was, how would I exist with not a brass farthing coming in? Because I’d never been in a position, before I married, to buy more than the necessities of clothing, I had spent more
than I should – not a fortune, by any means, just too much. I had made sure that Sheila had the best of everything, shopping mainly in better-class shops, with the result that I had saved
very little. There was nothing to do but climb down and crawl back to my mother. I sold all my furniture and household items for £100, which would keep me going until I found a job. Mum was
willing to look after four-year-old Sheila to let me go out to work . . . and she could also make sure that Jimmy and I had nothing more to do with each other.

Fate, however, still had something up its sleeve with which to clobber me. Some months earlier, the doctor had informed Woodend Hospital that I needed a D and C, and the appointment they sent
was for the week after I moved back home. That was all right, Sheila would be well looked after, so I went in without a qualm.

The examination took place the day before the operation, and imagine how I felt when they told me they couldn’t operate because I was pregnant. The doctors and nurses saw nothing strange
about this, I was a married woman and pregnancy was only to be expected.

BUT! This pregnancy hadn’t been expected, and Mum and Auntie Ina were coming to visit me the next afternoon, supposedly after the deed had been done. It was a different deed that had
already been done though, and I couldn’t sleep for worrying over how to break the news to them. When I tearfully told them, afraid and ashamed, their shocked expressions, the way their eyes
darkened and their mouths pursed up told me to prepare myself for a tongue-lashing such as I’d never had in my life before.

It probably wasn’t a good thing that they were forced to bottle up their anger in the hospital and in the street on the way home, for it kept building up. The explosion was therefore all
the greater when we went into the house, and I think I had better draw a veil over what was said. It’s not something I want to resurrect. I can still feel the deep burning shame that I felt
then.

I had the worry now of not being able to take a job, and it was a worry with no money coming in. I had to do something. Even though I was terrified of what the doctor would say
– Dr Agnes would have torn a strip off me and sent me away with a flea in my ear, but she had died a year or so before – I forced myself to go and tell him my predicament. He listened,
handing me a hankie to staunch my tears, then told me to go back to the waiting room and sit until all his patients had gone.

For those who don’t remember, or are not old enough to know how it used to be, there was no system to let people know whose turn it was. Patients came in and sat down, and if you were
smart, you counted how many were in front of you and made a mental note of their faces. Then, when the last of them was called in, you knew you were next. If you didn’t pay proper attention,
some unscrupulous person who came in after you would jump the queue. The point is, of course, that there wasn’t a queue. You sat down anywhere in the room and had to keep your wits about
you.

There were honest people too, of course, who said, ‘I think it’s your turn now’, or ‘You were before me’, and that was how it was that night. Two people at
different times tried to tell me it was my turn, and I had to say that the doctor told me to wait till last. I sincerely hoped that neither of them realised why.

I had been there, the second time, for about half an hour, when I finally went though to the surgery. The doctor said, ‘I shouldn’t really do this you know.’

I knew it was against the law to perform an abortion, but I thought that this only applied to unqualified people, back-street quacks, not real doctors.

Noticing my bewilderment, he smiled. ‘It’s frowned on because it’s dangerous, you see.’ Then he told me to lie down on the couch. I don’t know exactly what he did,
but it was a few days later before the foetus came away.

Although Jimmy had gone, Johnny was still at Mid Stocket Road and made things quite awkward for me by giving me sly glances as if to say, ‘I know what you’ve been up to.’

To get away for a spell, I took Sheila to London for a holiday, paying for only one ticket because children under four could travel free, and I assured myself that it would be
all right. How could they tell I was lying if I said she was still within the age limit?

The ticket collector in King’s Cross would never have picked up on it if my own daughter hadn’t spilt the beans. I answered his query, ‘How old is the little girl?’ by
saying, ‘She’s only three.’

Sheila, bless her little cotton socks, beamed at him proudly, ‘No, I’m four.’

I looked the man straight in the eye. ‘She means she’ll be four on her next birthday.’ He accepted that. He wasn’t to know that her next birthday was not for another 345
days, when she would be five, not four. He did, however, have the hint of a twinkle in his eye as he waved us through.

The other little incident wasn’t so nerve-wracking. In fact, it was quite funny. On the Sunday, Uncle Jim’s children were making ready for Sunday School when Auntie Gwen said,
‘Why don’t you take little Sheila with you, Jean?’

I don’t think Jean was very pleased, but Sheila was determined to go. When they came home, however, Jean was hopping mad. ‘I’m not taking her with me again! D’you know
what she did?’

‘Not until you tell us, dear,’ her mother smiled.

‘When we stood up to sing our first hymn, she sang, too.’

‘What was wrong with that?’

‘She didn’t know any of the words.’

This made me guess what was coming, but I waited to be told.

‘She sang a different song. Stone Cold Dead in de Market! I could have died!’

I had to explain that this was the song Sheila had taken a fancy to since she’d heard it on the wireless, but the words weren’t exactly suitable for church, because the last line
went, ‘She killed nobody but her husband.’ Mind you, I don’t remember any more of it, but in spite of Jean’s mortified expression, we adults couldn’t help
laughing.

Our return journey was made with no query as to my daughter’s age.

It must have been well on in 1948 when I started as a clerkess in McDonald’s Garage in Craigie Loanings, an offshoot of the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society. The
SCWS also had a Funeral Undertaker’s business in Bon Accord Street under the name of Campbell’s Motors, supplying extra funeral cars when needed. Apart from McDonald’s being a
garage with mechanics and petrol pumps, there was a large area of parking spaces to let out. There were very few private garages in the area, the houses (of silvery grey granite) had been built
before the advent of motor cars. We also ran quite a good taxi service – Rolls Royces and large Austins for weddings and funerals as well as ordinary run-of-the-mill hires.

Because the garage was open all day every day (24/7 as they say nowadays) there was a night clerk who took over from me at 6 p.m. and handed back to me at nine the following morning. It
didn’t register with me then that he worked a fifteen-hour shift to my twelve (less dinner hour and a half), but I expect he got a higher rate of pay. Our salaries were paid directly into the
bank from Head Office in Glasgow, so I don’t know how his compared with mine. I wouldn’t have cared whatever it was, for I didn’t envy him working through the night, often on his
own in the vast garage empty of other human beings.

Petrol was still rationed then, and being short when I counted the coupons at the end of the day was devastating. It was actually far worse than being short in the money tally. Several
customers, even regulars such as businessmen, tried to cheat us, and occasionally succeeded. They would engage me, or whoever was on the desk, in conversation while John the garage-man was filling
their tanks, maybe take us out to see a new car they’d purchased, then jump in and drive away without handing over the required amount of coupons. Their petrol would probably have been
charged to an account, and there was really no way of proving their guilt.

I can remember many times when Ian helped me to check my sales, and when I helped him to check his, trying to match the vehicle numbers on the coupons to the customers who had charged off. There
was even one teatime when we were so engaged and a doctor came in to park his car. Dr Fraser (not his real name) always came in for a wee chat, and when he saw us feverishly engaged in checking
petrol coupons, he said, ‘Are you short, Ginger?’ He always called me that although I considered my hair to be chestnut or auburn, not ginger.

But I was never angry about it. He came to my rescue, and Ian’s, more than once by telling us to take what we needed from the supply that he’d ‘banked’ with us. Doctors
were allowed much more fuel than ordinary people, and he sometimes didn’t use all his in the time allowed.

Dr Fraser featured in a humorous incident early one New Year’s Day. Hogmanay was the busiest night of the year for taxis and I was asked to work on until the pressure
eased off. It was three in the morning before Ian and I were able to stand back and draw an easy breath. The phone had been ringing continuously and there had been a steady stream of people walking
in looking for a taxi, as well as motorists coming in for petrol. No law against drink-driving in those days.

Waiting for a taxi to take me home was like waiting for it to rain pound notes. I had given up hope and was about to hoof it all the way up Mid Stocket when Dr Fraser bounded in. ‘My God,
Ginger!’ he exclaimed when he saw me. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here at this time of night?’