Shoes Were For Sunday (13 page)

We could see no reason for this change, which confused us, unless the wild suggestion was true that it was because some people might be colour blind.

But we didn’t resist for a single moment the arrival of the new tramcars. Such gleaming opulence, such luxurious chrome and glittering glass, such a richness of finish. We felt we were the envy of the entire country. We exclaimed over each splendid detail as though we had bought one privately. We used to wait for a new car, letting the shabby old faithfuls rattle past by the half-dozen, counting the time well spent to ride in such luxury.

This wasn’t a habit indulged in by us alone. Some visiting relatives from America took me into town one
day, and I heard the husband say to his wife that she must wait to travel in the newest tramcar, for they were the finest in the world. In the world!
We
thought they were, of course, but it was impressive to hear a visitor, and an American at that, agree with our opinion.

The new trams had a more sophisticated trolley arrangement than the old, so that hardly any skill or strength was required to swing it about for the return journey. With the older trams, the conductor had to exert some power and have a nice sense of accuracy to place the pulley against the overhead wire at the first attempt. We children used to cluster round the terminals, to assess the prowess of conductors, and we let them know in no uncertain terms just how good or bad they were.

Sometimes our mothers sent us to the terminus to get coppers for a sixpence, from the stock carried by the conductor. But, of course, if we’d been cheeky about his trolley attempts we could say goodbye to any thought of getting our money exchanged. There was nothing for it but to wait for the next tram, and stand admiringly by, hoping our compliments on the trolley finesse would soften the conductor and we’d get our coppers.

When the old cars were moving, these trolleys could be temperamental, especially if the driver was new. There would be a lurch, and the trolley would come bouncing off the overhead wire in a shower of sparks, and swing wildly back and forth as the car slithered to a halt. This was a nerve-racking experience for the timid,
and there would be shouts, ‘The trolley’s off – the trolley’s off’, and all eyes would fasten anxiously on the conductor as he swung it towards the overhead wire again.

There was no danger, but it made us all uneasy to feel we were sitting there unconnected to that magic overhead wire. If this happened three or four times in the course of a journey, there would be alarmed tut-tutting from the women, and contemptuous opinions from the men that the driver had ‘nae idea how to drive a caur’. ‘Aye, he must be new,’ somebody would murmur. ‘He juist hasnae got the hang o’ it.’ Even with trams there were plenty of back-seat drivers.

When a ha’penny was laid on the tramlines it became a pretended penny after the tram had thundered over it and flattened it out most satisfactorily. To achieve this, we flirted under the wheels of the trams quite fearlessly, for we were so familiar with the sight of them rocketing past our windows we saw little danger. I never knew any child to be injured by a tram. We were as surefooted as mountain deer, and the drivers were quick to spot a faltering childish stumble on the rare occasion this happened, and to apply the brakes in good time. They’d all played on the tramlines themselves when children, and our games didn’t make them turn a hair. If a child was occasionally scooped up in the ‘cow-catcher’ – a metal shovel arrangement worked by the driver to remove any obstacle in his path – well, that was all right. Wasn’t that what the cow-catcher was
there for? And it would be a good lesson to the youngster for the future.

But if we treated the dangers of being run down by a tramcar with contempt, there were plenty of other fears which shook us by the throat in our tenement games. There was the mysterious creature called ‘Flannel Feet’. Nobody had ever actually seen him, but his nameless exploits filled us with such dread that it was a brave child who would go up a strange close in the dark. Even on our own familiar stair landings, a broken light would send us scurrying past the dark corners with pounding hearts, sure that this terrifying Flannel Feet would be lurking in the shadows. The fact that we never knew a single person who’d been attacked meant nothing. We frightened each other with stories which came from nowhere. A childish game called ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was the source of such a tale. In this game somebody had to hide, and we others rushed about, calling up closes and in alley-ways, with our hands cupped to our mouths to send our voices soaring:

Robinson Crusoe give us a call,

Give us an answer or nothing at all.

The one hiding would call out in a high disguised voice ‘Pee-wee’ and we’d try to guess the direction of the sound and set off in pursuit. Then the victor would hide. Frightening tales were told of the answering ‘Pee-wee’ having been given by Flannel Feet, when the
unsuspecting searcher fell straight into his clutches. Strangely enough, we never even asked for details of what this monster
did
. His mere existence brought terror to us.

The cemetery was another source of shivering fright. To pass its wall on a dark night was a dare few of us accepted, for didn’t we all know ghosts gathered behind the wall, ready to pounce on the unwary? Sometimes in winter, made brave by numbers after our slides on the ice, we’d perch on this wall and sing, ‘I am a poor wee orphan, my mother she is dead’, our eyes darting to the tombstones beyond. But one verse was enough, and we’d slither down, and race for home, glad to have escaped the clutch of ghostly fingers.

Living in our own world, as we children did, it never occurred to us that grown-ups could ever be nervous or frightened. We knew mothers and grannies were brave and strong, and weren’t even afraid of the dark. You couldn’t even scare them by jumping round a corner unexpectedly, and the last thing I dreamed of was that I, a particularly nervous wee creature, could instil real fear into anyone, least of all my beloved grannie. And yet I did it, all unknowingly, one terrible winter afternoon.

Grannie had slipped downstairs to visit a neighbour while we were at school, and when I came in at four o’clock I found the door ‘off the sneck’, and pushed it open. I was so entranced at the cosy warmth of the firelight that instead of going in search of her as I usually
did, I curled up in the armchair to wait quietly till she came in to light the gas and maybe make a cup of tea. I was strictly forbidden to light the gas mantle anyway, which was out of reach unless I stood on a chair.

It grew darker and darker, and at last I heard Grannie’s light footstep and the rustle of her long skirt as she pushed the door open. For some reason, which I can’t explain to this day, instead of calling out, ‘Is that you, Grannie?’, I sat completely silent. She picked up the matches from the dresser, moved towards the gas mantle, and then stopped with a frightened intake of breath, sensing somebody was in the kitchen. By this time, the whole situation was so unreal. I was too scared to open my mouth. Grannie’s eyes searched the shadows, picking up the outline of a body in the chair, but instead of recognizing me, she gave a strangled cry, dropped the matches and rushed towards the door.

Now, thoroughly frightened at the effect I’d had on her, and terrified of retribution, I called out in a hysterical giggle, ‘Grannie, it’s me.’ She stopped as if she had been shot, and turned back. ‘You!’ she cried, in such a tone of horror at my wickedness that I burst into tears. ‘Why didn’t you speak when I came in?’ she demanded. ‘I might have had a heart attack. Fancy thinking out such a cruel thing to do to your grannie.’

She sat down, trembling, too shocked even to light the gas.

I was in such a turmoil of confusion it was like a bad dream. Why had I done it? I didn’t know. But fancy my
brave grannie being frightened of me? Rushing to make amends, I leaped on a chair, seized a small glass from the shelf and poured a tot of our medicinal whisky into it and urged Grannie to drink it to steady her nerves. I’d seen my mother do this when a neighbour’s little girl was run over by a push-bike, and it had magic properties then, and it would surely help Grannie at this moment. Grannie took one sip and let out a yell that scared me half out of my wits. In the dark I hadn’t noticed that there was a sewing needle in the glass, put there out of harm’s way, and Grannie had nearly swallowed it. Was there no end to the damage I was capable of on this black afternoon?

My mother, of course, was told of the whole wicked episode when she came in from work, and I was duly punished. As I lay crying in bed, I was bewildered and tried to understand how it had all happened. It seemed to me it all started because Grannie had been frightened by a shadow which she didn’t know was me. I hadn’t known till then that grown-ups could fear the unknown just as we children feared the invisible Flannel Feet. And for the first time I began to wonder if maybe even Flannel Feet wasn’t a bogey-man at all, but just somebody like me who should have had the sense to open his mouth and speak, instead of creating an atmosphere of terror merely by keeping quiet at the wrong time.

But if we children hadn’t actually met a bogey-man we knew everybody else within a radius of a quarter of
a mile of our tenements. A stranger trying to lure any of us would have had a thin time. We knew the habits, good and bad, of the entire adult community. Our mothers and grannies saw no sense in hiding from us the evil effects of drink, and we saw enough drunkenness to make us teetotallers for life. We saw with horror how drink could turn a quiet father into a wild creature who could beat up his wife, and we saw ashamed women taking bundles to the pawn on Monday mornings to raise enough cash to carry them through the week, because earnings had been swallowed in weekend drinking.

With the harsh judgement of children we saw them all in black and white. Mr Grant was avoided because he drank. We’d
seen
him on Saturday nights, so it was no good telling us he might be as docile as a lamb during the rest of the week, and maybe even a better husband and father than somebody else whose sins weren’t so obvious and which we wouldn’t have understood.

A puzzling figure in this assessment was that of Mr Carr. He was an old soldier, carried himself straight as a ramrod, and always looked, in my mother’s words, ‘as if he came out of a band-box’. Yet, according to my grannie, ‘he drank like a fish’. How could Grannie, and other people too, say such a thing when I’d never seen him drunk? ‘Aye ye widnae, lassie,’ said old Mrs Peebles, his mother-in-law, when I asked her. ‘He carries it weel, I’ll say that, but he drinks away every penny just the same.’ I knew she was a God-fearing truthful old lady,
who was always reading her Bible when I went in to see if she wanted any messages, so I believed her; and Mr Carr joined the ranks of those who must be avoided, especially on Saturday nights.

And yet it was Mr Carr who taught me that there are many shades between black and white, and maybe even streaks of pure gold where they were least expected.

My brothers had been playing piggy-back on the staircase on the way up to our second-storey house, and when they reached our door the younger one had fallen with a terrible crash and hit his head on the sharp edge of the stair-rise. Grannie had no need to scold, for that still figure had quenched all argument on the part of my brother. By the time I arrived home from school, the doctor was busy at the bedside and my mother had been sent for from work. ‘Severe concussion’ was the verdict and my mother and Grannie were instructed what to do. Bottles of medicine were ranged along the dresser, but against all of them the small patient, with clenched teeth, rebelled and refused to swallow a drop. It had been impressed on us that the ‘opening’ medicine was vital, but, ill as he was, nothing would make the rebel swallow it. We tried everything. Even giving it to him as though he were a puppy, and holding his lips until he appeared to swallow. The minute the hand was taken away, he spat it up, or threw it up, and this seemed to go on for days.

I think everybody knew of our difficulties except the doctor. For some reason my mother and Grannie were
frightened to admit no medicine had been swallowed, in case the wee chap would be removed to hospital. We had a terror of hospitals in the tenements, as so many who went there never seemed to come back. Or it could have been we just couldn’t afford the fee for another visit from the doctor.

With the complete involvement of tenement neighbours, everybody on the stair and nearby had weighed in with ideas and suggestions. Old quarrels were forgotten as each rushed in with what seemed the perfect solution. No good. The patient grew more limp and exhausted, and we were desperate. It was Saturday night. My brother was afraid of only two things. Drunks and soldiers. In despair, my mother moved to the window, biting her lip to stop the tears, when suddenly she saw the upright figure of Mr Carr passing the close. She threw up the window, ‘Mr Carr,’ she called down, ‘wait a minute. Can I speak to you?’ I was horrified. Didn’t my mother know he would be on his way to the pub to drink like a fish? How could a drunk man help us?

But my mother was inspired. She’d remembered my brother’s fear. She’d remembered too that Mr Carr kept his sergeant’s uniform well pressed for his Territorial meetings. Hadn’t she always said he looked as if he’d come out of a band-box. She knew it was Saturday all right. But she also knew in our tenement world everybody shared the griefs and worries of the other, and it was certain Mr Carr, who only lived round the corner and whose mother-in-law often visited Grannie, was
aware of the drama which had been going on with the small patient.

With zest he entered into the conspiracy. The pub was forgotten. Quickly he changed into his awe-inspiring uniform, and with cane under his arm, and peaked cap down on his nose, he thundered at the door. ‘Where’s this rebellious boy?’ he demanded. ‘Give me the medicine,’ and he held out an imperious hand. My brother’s lips parted in terror. The spoon was inserted. The medicine went down. ‘Now,’ said Mr Carr in a voice which shook the ornaments on the shelf, ‘if you don’t
keep
it down, you’ll be sentenced to fourteen days in the guard-room.’ Nobody knew what that meant, but it sounded terrible. Terrible enough for the patient to keep his lips tightly closed. Next day the medicine had done its work. From that moment my brother started on the long slow road to recovery. It was a miracle. But the greatest miracle, it seemed to me, was that we owed it all to a man who could drink like a fish. I never forgot Mr Carr. And, apart maybe from Hitler, from that day I never believed anyone was entirely bad.