Gift from the Gallowgate (31 page)

I followed on, trying to explain that John was right, that it wasn’t fair to single him out, but to no avail. I was told, ‘He shouldn’t have soaked the janitor. He deserves . .
.’

‘He didn’t mean to soak the janitor,’ I pleaded, only to have the door closed firmly against me. I lingered for a few moments, hearing the furious shouts from both man and boy,
and the first yell of pain as the belt came down. I wondered if I should go in to stop this miscarriage of justice, but . . . let me say I was a coward, and John had done more than enough at other
times to deserve what he was getting now. I crept away, into the staffroom two doors up, and it wasn’t long before the secretary came through.

‘Mr Robb’s taking John Wallace home in his car, but God knows what his mother’ll think. They’re both absolutely soaking.’

I couldn’t help laughing as I pictured this, although I suspect that this was due more to relief that it was over than to real mirth.

Neither Mr Robb nor John mentioned it the following day, and I was quite glad to let it remain buried.

In the eighteen months (years?) that I had him, I had many confrontations with John Wallace, but his work did improve. At first if he was doing addition sums, he wrote them
round in a circle, but he did come out of that and was coping fairly well, which made his next outburst all the more of a surprise.

We had progressed as far as hundreds, tens and units, and I had written ten sums on the swivelling blackboard on the wall – no easel like we had when I was young. I sat down to mark the
spelling homework they had handed in, and told the bright half dozen who had finished first to hand out the marked jotters for me. Then I asked if anyone was still working, and getting a proud
‘No’, I got various kids to work the answers on the board. All well and good, you may think.

Then I asked if anyone had got all the sums correct, and ignoring the forest of hands that shot up, John bawled out, ‘Me, Mrs Davidson. I got them a’ right.’

‘That’s very good, John.’ It was, for he’d had quite a struggle understanding.

‘Mrs Davidson,’ piped another, deeply indignant voice from the next desk, ‘he didn’t get them right. He copied the answers off me.’

I was so disappointed that I said, ‘But that’s cheating, John, and I’m sure you wouldn’t have been the only one with some wrong.’

Looking back, I suppose I should have known what would happen, but the eruption took us all by surprise, and I was glad that it was directed at me, not the poor soul who ‘clyped’.
John came charging towards me, picked my fountain pen off my desk and snapped it in two. Then he flung a chair at me while I was still trying to get round my desk to take hold of him, followed by a
schoolbag in the face as I was trying to gather my senses together.

Warned against touching him or not, I was seeing red now, and I was damned if I’d let the little monster treat me like that. I grabbed at the neck of his jersey and heard it rip as he
struggled free, then the next thing I knew, he punched me in the mouth.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever been punched in the mouth, but even the pain didn’t stop me from pushing him against a wall. The jersey tore a little farther with him
struggling so madly, but he was only eight or nine, and I was over five feet and almost eleven stones with it.

While all this was going on, a little messenger had scooted down to tell Mr Robb and he came racing in to take this disruptive little devil in hand. One look at the tableau, blood steaming down
my chin, and he yanked the miscreant into the corridor. I will draw a veil over the next five minutes or so, all I can say is that when I opened the door to stop what I was sure would end in
murder, I was told to go inside and ‘leave him to me’.

I had been fortunate to get off with a punch in the mouth. My scissors, a large pair used for various purposes, had also been lying on my desk, so the murder could have been mine.

But I’d had more than enough, as I tearfully told Mr Robb when I ventured out of the staff toilets, where I had taken refuge until I got over the shock. ‘I’m not having him in
my class again.’

‘I’m not surprised. I’m bloody annoyed with the Sick Kids. I rang them just now to tell them what had happened and they said you could have refused to have him at any time. A
pity they didn’t think of telling us at the very start.’

I couldn’t go to school the following day, Friday, because my face was all puffed up and the pain was agonising, but by Monday, it felt a little bit better. My nerves were still quite
fragile, so when my pupils handed me ‘Get Well’ cards they had made, and asked if I was all right now, I very nearly dissolved into tears.

It would have been about three days later when someone knocked at my classroom door, and when I answered the man said, ‘I’m John Wallace’s father.’

I could picture him giving me a thrashing, or, at the very least, threatening to report me to the Education Authority for abusing his son, so I was feeling sick as I closed the door behind me
– little ears could hear a lot more than they were meant to – and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Wallace.’

‘No, no, you’ve no need to be sorry, Mrs Davidson. I’ve just come to thank you for what you managed to do for John. He’s a lot better behaved at home now, and he seems to
be settling in at Cordyce.’

I hadn’t given a thought to where the child was now, but I was glad that he’d been sent to this special school, to be taught by teachers trained specially to deal with disruptive
children.

‘He liked you, you know,’ Mr Wallace continued, ‘and he was sorry for punching you.’ He hesitated briefly. ‘He hasn’t told us what happened, so could you tell
me why he went off the handle at that particular time?’

I explained the situation, and he nodded his head when I came to the end. ‘Aye, I understand now. It was being found out in a lie that did it. His mother used to stick up for him when the
teacher at Drumgarth complained about his behaviour. That was the school he was at before we moved up to Northfield. I couldn’t get my wife to admit he was just as bad before the accident.
She got him referred to the hospital, and they put him in the psychiatric ward, but I’ve aye said it was a good walloping he needed. She wouldn’t let me lift my hand to him,
more’s the pity.’

So that interlude came to an end, thank goodness. But . . . it wasn’t the last I saw of John Wallace.

I had been teaching for perhaps three years when Smithfield was hit by a series of tragedies. First, the senior remedial teacher, quite elderly and already crippled with
arthritis, had to have a mastectomy, and although Mr Robb assured her that he would collect her every morning (she only lived a few minutes away from school) she hated the idea of being dependent
on anyone. Then one morning, the milkman could get no answer when he was collecting the money, and looking through the kitchen window, he saw her lying with her head in the gas oven. It was a
terrible shock to all of us, but we couldn’t all attend the funeral. Someone had to stay behind to look after the doubled up classes.

Not much more than a fortnight later, the headmaster came into the staffroom with shock stamped all over his face. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from Margaret Lorimer’s sister.
She . . . was taken out of the Don last night.’ (Not her real name, for obvious reasons, but, strangely, she was the junior remedial teacher.)

Another suicide! Another funeral!

Just weeks after that, we learned that a third teacher had died. She had gone off work because of trouble with her legs, so her death was just as unexpected as the other two. This time, however,
we
did
all manage to go to the funeral, the secretary and the janitor included, leaving eight poor students to look after the doubled-up classes. On our return, they reported that there
had been no problems, everything had gone smoothly, but we had our doubts. On the other hand, as the assistant head pointed out, perhaps the deaths of three teachers in such quick succession had
struck home to the pupils as much as it did to us. Who knows?

I not only taught while I was at Smithfield, I also was taught . . . or poor Eleanor Hutton, the teacher in the room next door to mine, tried to teach me how to play the
guitar. She and her husband sang and played lovely folk songs, and she was very patient with me. I bought myself a cheap guitar and did master the usual, easy chords, but I was too slow in changing
from one to the other to be of any use as an accompanist, never mind a soloist.

It was my son who became interested, and although he complained at first that his fingers were too small to stretch to the proper positions, he was stimulated by watching Lillias’s husband
(who hummed to his own accompaniment). Alan became so serious about it that he now plays classical as well as his own compositions, and makes records and CDs. He has also appeared on stage several
times, both amateur and along with professionals, in Britain and in America, although he probably won’t be very happy about me boasting about him.

I was seven when my father enrolled me with Bessie Jenkins, well known as an excellent piano teacher. I did quite well under her tuition until, at the age of ten, I began to take an interest in
the popular songs on the wireless. I tried them out and was soon tinkling away quite happily with no music.

This didn’t please my Dad, who said, ‘What’s the use of me paying for lessons for you when you’re playing by ear?’

When Miss Jenkins was told that I’d be stopping my lessons at the end of the session, she said, ‘Oh, what a shame. I was going to enter her for her first grade exams.’

But Dad was adamant, and many years later, I was playing as much without music as with, but not well enough either way to be confident in front of other people.

The next instrument I tried, when I was still around ten, was Dad’s Japanese (one-stringed) fiddle, which had a large horn attached to the side. I got as far as picking out the scale, but
that was it. I also tried the saw, longing to produce the haunting tunes he coaxed out of it so easily, but I could only make horrible, ear-shattering, teeth-on-edge screeches.

When I was about sixteen, the tuner told my mother that the piano was being ruined by being kept in the lounge where the fire was seldom lit, and advised her to sell it. It was a lovely piece of
furniture as well as having a beautiful tone, but this coming at a time when her finances were pretty grim, she sold it for £40 – if I remember correctly. I don’t know if it was
advertised in the local paper, or if the shop where it had been bought made her an offer, but whoever it was got a bargain. What I do know for sure is that I missed it.

Once I was in my own house in Mastrick, the first thing I wanted, of course, after the bare necessities of furniture, was a piano, but we could definitely not afford that. It wasn’t an
essential item, and I had to go on living without one, as I had done for more than fifteen years.

Perhaps eighteen months later, we were visiting Mum’s cousin Meg and her husband one afternoon, when George happened to say, ‘I’ve bought a new piano for Margaret . . .’
(their daughter and Bertha’s closest chum), ‘so I’m throwing out the old one.’

I was afraid to look at Jimmy then, but as soon as we got home, I broached the subject tentatively. ‘Would you mind if I asked George for his old piano?’ and was delighted when he
said, ‘Why not? I know you want it.’

Sadly, George saw how eager I was and decided to cash in. He asked for £15, which I could ill afford and had to take out of the tin in the sideboard drawer where I laid past the rent money
every week. I had never seen the instrument, but a piano was a piano, after all. Sadly, I was to find that there
were
differences in them, and this was a real corker – out of the
ark. It had fretwork decoration on the front, a candlestick holder at each side – and it would have been a proper honky-tonker, if all the yellowing keys had played, just like Winifred
Atwell’s ‘other piano’, although in no way could I compare myself with her.

I was quite disillusioned, but I persevered doggedly, slowly recognising that it was hopeless. It was too far-gone to be tuned into shape even if I could have afforded it, particularly since I
hadn’t yet replaced all I’d borrowed from the rent money.

But, miracle of miracles, I spotted an advert in the evening paper one night.

‘Piano for sale £15.’ I’d have to dip into what I had laid past for electricity this time. I later did away with saving to pay the quarterly bill by having a slot meter
installed. No coins meant no lights, no heat, no cooking. Anyway, the seller didn’t live far from us and we saved the cost of a van by pushing it round on its castors. It was a beauty, a
lovely mahogany with a gorgeous tone, and came with a stool filled with sheets of music. I was in heaven for days going through them all, and, of course, I added to the collection by buying many
more at sixpence a time (two and a half of today’s pence) from Woolworth’s in Union Street, when I had any spare cash . . . and sometimes when there was none to spare.

I treasured that piano until we decided to move into a multi-storey flat. There wasn’t room for it. The only available space, between the kitchen door and the outside wall, was just not
wide enough, so I traded it in for a smaller piano, a little, angular thing with corners, which fitted the space but didn’t have the tone or the appearance. Jimmy could see that I
wasn’t happy with it, and mentioned this to one of his workmates who offered to buy it. I think I let him have it for what I paid for it, which left both of us quite happy about the deal,
although I discovered later that the price of pianos had been rising steadily.

At one time, with my son having lessons on the accordion, I gave that a try and did manage to play recognisable tunes, but, again, not for other ears. Then a friend remarked,
‘Does your chest not get squeezed sometimes?’

He was obviously joking, but I wasn’t so eager to play after that.

I next bought (on credit) an electric organ. I had some fun with the different instrumental tones and rhythms, but I never quite mastered that, either. I exchanged it for a smaller piano –
only six octaves, and at the horrendous price of over five hundred pounds. I was teaching by this time, and was just able to make the monthly instalments. The story of its delivery is reminiscent
of one of Laurel and Hardy’s funniest short films, but it is absolutely true.