Shoes Were For Sunday (20 page)

These then were my boundaries until the day of the students’ collection for charity, when I suddenly stunned my two chums by suggesting we went into the town to see the start of the parade. I don’t know where the idea came from. Perhaps the chrysalis was ready to
burst its case, and the time was ripe for me to venture forth into a wider world. Until I actually said the words, I’d had no idea that I must subconsciously have been moving towards this moment. But, once uttered, we were all three passionately determined that the idea must be carried out.

We would walk, of course. The thought of spending money on fares was too ludicrous to be entertained. We would each save ninepence. That would allow threepence for a cup of coffee, and fourpence for two cakes. I knew these prices from my mother, who occasionally gave herself this treat with a fellow-worker. The remaining tuppence we’d give to the students for their charity.

At this time my pocket money for spending was threepence a week, and even with the odd ha’penny or penny earned from affluent adults for running down for a packet of cigarettes or a forgotten ounce of tobacco, it would take a few weeks to manage a clear ninepence. But I was in no hurry. This adventure to town was something to savour, and the brilliance of the idea of dining out was still so staggering I needed a bit of time to see myself actually doing it. I wanted to rehearse every move in my own mind.

I had never been inside a tearoom. My only experience of such things was on the screens of the cinema, where the heroine walked boldly in, accompanied by the man of her choice, sat down and ate large and wonderful meals. I shivered with apprehension and delight every time I thought of walking in and ordering coffee
and cakes, but how actually to do it was beyond imagination.

When one of my chums told her mother of our plan, that good lady was horrified at my presumption. She was sure such grandiose ideas in one so young boded ill for my future. ‘Who are you,’ she demanded, ‘to suppose grown women are there to attend to your wants?’ But if they were waitresses, I thought, surely they must want customers. But, of course, I was much too confused to argue with her.

Still, she put a terrible doubt in my heart, and all the way on that walk to town I felt a sinking in my stomach when I thought a derisive waitress might refuse to serve me because I was too soon aspiring for attention. I need have had no such fears. I led the way and we sat down at a table. ‘Three cups of coffee,’ I ordered huskily, ‘and six French cakes.’

The waitress took us in at a glance. ‘Imphm,’ she said, ‘I suppose you know they’re tuppence each?’ This was language we understood. ‘Aye,’ I assured her, ‘we’ve each got sevenpence.’ We’d never heard of tipping, and anyway would have considered it madness to give money to somebody who was clearly much better off than we were, and getting a good wage every week.

We had never tasted coffee before, and weren’t sure if we would like it, but we could get tea at home and we felt this was far too ordinary to choose in this magnificent glass-bedecked salon. We peeled the paper carefully off our French cakes, determined not to lose a morsel
of the icing, which was apt to stick treacherously if treated too roughly.

When we had savoured the last crumb we leaned back, ecstatic and replete, and watched the students cavorting in the street below. Some gaudily clad males actually came into the tearoom and raced upstairs in search of us, lured by our eager faces pressed to the windows. They were obviously disappointed to find gym slips and black lisle stockings. We each dropped our tuppence into the outstretched boxes with an air of abandon. It was a tremendous gesture to give tuppence away like this, for we longed for another French cake, and then we called for the bill. I collected the sevenpences from my chums and paid over the staggering sum of one and ninepence for our feast. We knew it would cost exactly this sum, but somehow when the moment came for handing it over, we felt we had spent a fortune.

Next moment we were in the street, ready for the walk home. We gazed at each other in triumph. We had done it. We had come to town. We had eaten and drunk at a famous restaurant, and we had each donated tuppence to charity. We had lived. We turned our footsteps towards home, and drew deep breaths of utter satisfaction. It had been a marvellous adventure.

That winter was the last I was to know as a child. Grannie took her usual dose of bronchitis at the end of November, but this time she seemed strangely listless. During previous attacks she ruled the house from her
bed, and I had to follow her instructions to the letter. The soups were made, the vegetables prepared, the table laid, all under her vigilant eye, and she ate and drank her little meals with a critical palate. We talked and argued, and I was praised or scolded, and we didn’t worry too much about bronchitis, for the only difference was that instead of sitting in the big chair with her knitting, Grannie was in bed. And I was doing the cooking.

Now she was very still, and my mother, who had stayed off work, kept glancing at her with a troubled frown. For some reason, it seemed we had to speak in whispers. ‘Does Grannie want any dinner?’ I asked, when my mother had poured the soup. ‘You see if she wants any,’ my mother said. I went over to the bed, and Grannie regarded me with frighteningly thoughtful eyes. When I asked if she wanted any soup she shook her head.

When I went over to the bed again, to see if maybe she would like a cup of tea and a biscuit, her eyes looked withdrawn, but she thought she could fancy a nice cup of tea. ‘Nane o’ yer sleesh,’ she whispered. ‘A guid strong cup noo’. That sounded more like my grannie, and I quickly got it ready. But she was too weak to lift the cup to her lips and I, who was never allowed to help Grannie in this way, for she scorned softness, had to put my hand behind her shoulders, and take the cup to her mouth. This was surely a terrible dose of bronchitis, and I wished the doctor would come again.

He came in after lunch, and he sounded her chest
and took her hand. ‘Now, now, Grannie, what’s this you’ve been up to? You’ll have to take your soup, you know. You must have something to stick to your ribs.’ She managed a smile for him, and I was shooed away from the bed. Surely he wouldn’t talk to Grannie like that if she were really ill? She was just tired. That was it. How often had I heard her say, as she moved about our kitchen, doing a hundred and one different jobs, ‘Aye, the willin’ horse gets the heaviest burden to bear.’ And she would laugh when I would say, ‘Whit horse dae ye mean, Grannie? Is it Sanny the horse that helps at the smiddie?’

My mother decided to sit up all night, which made me tremble, for I knew people only did this when illnesses were serious. I was put into the big bed, in case I’d disturb Grannie in the hurley. I didn’t go to the penny matinée that Saturday, for Grannie would only take her gruel or her tea if I gave it to her. It was a dream. Me ministering to Grannie instead of her doing it to me.

In the morning, Sunday morning, when I wakened and looked down at the hurley to see if she was any better, Grannie was lying, pale and remote, with her eyes shut and I knew that she was dead.

I was prostrate with grief that I was too young to express, and it was decided it would be easier for everyone if I were out of the way until after the funeral. It had to be somewhere not too far from school, for there was no spare cash for expensive tram or bus fares, and as we were in the grip of winter I couldn’t walk far.
And so, as Auntie Jeanie’s house fulfilled these requirements, we accepted her offer to put me up. I could sleep with Betty and would be no trouble, she assured my mother.

I had never slept at anybody’s house before, apart from holiday apartments, so I was quite unaware of the upset even one extra person can give to a household. In my numb misery I didn’t even begin to appreciate Auntie Jeanie’s generosity in offering to have me in addition to her own three children, and I went listlessly to the new address after school finished at four o’clock. I don’t remember that first evening at all. I suppose I must have done some homework, have eaten something and finally gone to bed, but nothing of that remains in my memory. But the morning! Ah! that was different!

With Grannie I’d been accustomed to being roused almost as soon as she got up herself, and while the fire was being lit I was getting dressed, and swiftly off to the shops for the rolls for breakfast, and maybe some mince for our midday meal, which we called our dinner, and possibly whisking along to the fruit-shop for some vegetables for soup.

I’d pull my hand-knitted jersey over my head, lace up my long-legged boots, and at the same time reel off a list of the things I thought Grannie might want. I’d get the purse out of the kitchen drawer, seize the basket and be off, almost before Grannie had time to agree that I’d remembered everything. Sometimes, in winter, when I had chilblains, it took me an age to drag my
aching heels to the shops and back, and I would stop at every iced puddle and splinter the mica-thin brittle surface with my boot. The fun of this nearly made me forget the agony of the chilblains, but then the pain would come flaming back and it would seem certain that I must be late for breakfast and for school.

Once the house was safely reached, I’d sit on the long stool and toast the rolls in front of the fire, which by now was blazing in the open range. One for Tommy, one for Willie, and a half each for Grannie and for me, which was all we wanted. As each was toasted, I would run to the scrubbed sink top with it, cut open the steaming centre, plop in a slice of margarine, and watch with pleasure as the yellow melting fat ran into the hot dough. A smart tap on the crisp top as I shut the roll cracked the surface satisfactorily in all directions, and it was popped on a plate on top of the range to keep warm while I toasted the others.

Grannie meanwhile had been making the porridge, and infusing the tea, and soon we three children were kneeling on the rug with our porridge bowls on top of the long stool which ran the length of the fireplace, the heat from the fire warming our faces and fingers as we supped the good meal. How cosy these winter breakfasts were, for we had all been out of doors to whet our appetites, the boys delivering their milk round, and of course me getting the messages in.

I had thought this routine would go on for ever, for I knew no other.

But now Grannie was dead, and here was I in a strange bed in a strange kitchen. I lay silent and still in my misery, waiting for a voice to tell me it was time to get up and go for the rolls. I wondered where Auntie Jeanie bought hers, and if I would be able to find the shop quickly, and get back in time to make my way to school before nine o’clock, for I would have farther to walk from this house.

I opened my eyes, and to my amazement Auntie Jeanie was standing by the bed with a tray. A tray! And on it was a cup of tea, a bowl of porridge and a buttered roll. I stared uncomprehendingly. ‘Who’s no’ weel?’ I asked. ‘Is it Betty?’ And I turned to the sleeping figure beside me to search for signs of flu or fever.

‘No, no,’ said Auntie Jeanie comfortably, ‘it’s for you, pet. It’s your breakfast.’ ‘But there’s naethin’ wrang wi’ me,’ I said in bewilderment. ‘And whit aboot the messages?’ It was Auntie’s turn to look surprised. ‘What messages?’ she asked.

When I explained that I always went for the shopping before breakfast, to make sure Grannie would have everything before I went to school, she looked round at her three children who were now awake and listening with interest to our conversation. ‘Do you hear that?’ she demanded. ‘You three don’t know you’re born, that’s clear.’ Then, turning to me, she smiled, ‘Well, no messages this morning, my lass. Eat your breakfast in bed, like the other three, and see if we can get some colour into those pale cheeks.’

I was dumbfounded. They had breakfast in bed
every morning
! So I was to have breakfast in bed too. And no messages. The fire was lit, the kitchen a picture of cosy comfort. I should have envied my cousins their life of ease, and yet I felt only contempt for them. I could hear Grannie’s voice as though she were in the room, ‘Bairns have to learn to stand up to life and work hard, for we never ken whit’s in front o’ them.’ I knew what her verdict would be on my cousins, ‘Spoiled, that lot – fair spoiled.’

I trembled. Maybe I was being spoiled too, now that Grannie wasn’t there to keep me strong for the battle. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to face up to life if I went soft this way.

But for one morning, in the strangeness of Auntie Jeanie’s house, and under the numbing weight of my sense of loss, I allowed myself to savour, for the very first time, the experience of having breakfast in bed. I condemned myself for my weakness and I hoped it would do my character no harm.

I whispered to the shadows, ‘Just for this one morning, Grannie. I’ll get up for it tomorrow.’ And I did.

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First published by Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd 1970

Reissued by Pan Books Ltd 1973

Published in Penguin Books 2012

Copyright © Molly Weir, 1970

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