Gift from the Gallowgate (4 page)

These elderly ladies had also to do the housework and keep things in general looking spick and span. They didn’t wash their bedding in spring like most housewives did, but waited until the
weather was more predictable. It turned out, therefore, that we were there when the blanket washing got under way, and I was allowed to tramp them in a big tub outside – a most enjoyable task
– and to help to put them through the big mangle set up by the back door before they were pegged out on the washing line. Mind you, although the two Misses Taylor were always profuse in their
thanks, I don’t think I could actually have done much to help them.

At first, I was a little afraid of their brother. Joe shuffled about, never saying anything, just a grunt now and again, but I liked to watch the swing of his arms as he chopped sticks, or dug
into the pile of coal to fill the scuttle for the fireside. The fire had to be lit every day, to heat water, to cook, and so on, so although this was the middle of summer, he never removed his
khaki jacket. Sometimes whole rivers of sweat poured down his face, but all he did was to wipe them off with his sleeve.

After a while, he began to smile at me, to stand in such a position that I could see what he was doing, even holding out the axe to let me have a try – I didn’t manage – and
letting me hold the bowl while he collected eggs. The hens had a habit of laying wherever they felt like it, free range as it’s called now, and it sometimes took quite a time to find all
their hidey-holes. By the end of our first stay with the Taylors, Joe and I were best pals. Mum was anything but happy about the association, I don’t think she lost her initial fear of him,
but my dad laughed off her doubts.

‘He’s just like a child himself. He won’t touch her.’

Joe never did touch me – not that year or the next.

I can’t put a month to those idylls in the countryside. I have photographs of me helping with the haymaking, and in these parts, harvest isn’t until well into
August. It could be that the second of our sojourns there, each lasting at least a month, was at a different time from the first, but in both cases, Dad went to work in Aberdeen on his motorbike. I
don’t know how my mother filled her days on her own. I was too busy doing what I was doing, what I liked doing, to think about anybody else – selfish brat that I was! Maybe she rebelled
at last, for our second stay was our last, though I always have happy memories of the Taylors.

I was newly ten when I was sent to my Granny’s sister at Gowanhill, a few miles from Fraserburgh, for the whole six weeks of the school summer holidays. I can’t
really recall why, though I’ve the feeling that Granny thought I’d been looking a bit peaky. I had lovely auburn hair (I had, honestly, long and curly until it was cut), and the very
fair skin that goes with it. I doubt if I was really under the weather, but Mum’s Auntie Teenie agreed to have me and that was it.

Uncle Jimmy Christie (pronounced Chrystie by his neighbours, which I always thought was swearing) was grieve at the farm, and we had visited them a few times before, so they weren’t
complete strangers to me. I did feel a little weepy when the car turned a corner and just disappeared, but Auntie Teenie wasn’t one to waste sympathy where it wasn’t needed. ‘Get
your case unpacked’, she told me, brusquely, ‘and get yoursel’ washed. You’ll be sleepin’ ben the hoose in Jean’s bed, so you’ll be a’ richt
there.’

I did as I was told. I washed my face, hands and knees in the basin set out for me in the back porch, and was made to scrub my neck before I was shepherded into the tiny room which was to be
mine for the next six weeks. In spite of the woman’s assurance, I wasn’t all right in the bed. I had a problem getting into it for a start, it was so high, then Auntie Teenie blew out
the candle and I was left alone . . . in the dark . . . on a bed that moved with every breath I took. Not only that, something bit my arms and legs when I shifted them. I felt the mattress
gingerly, wondering what kind of beasties were there, and wasn’t altogether relieved to find that it was stuffed with what felt like stalks of corn – the cause of what I’d
imagined to be insect bites. I later found this to be what they called a ‘caff’ or chaff bed. I got to sleep eventually and also got accustomed to the animated mattress and having to
pummel it every morning to raise it from the dead.

There were a few children in the same row of cottages and they were friendly up to a point, but they were much younger. Also, don’t forget that I came from the big city
– a toonser, in other words – and was related to the grieve, the foreman, whose word was law. But Uncle Jimmy didn’t scare me. He took me under his manly wing at the farm, letting
me mash neeps for the cows in a big machine that took all my strength to work. He let me try my hand at milking once, but I didn’t care for the feel of the cow’s udder. That and the
lash round the face I got from her sharny, smelly tail was enough for me. I was definitely not going to be a milkmaid when I grew up.

Uncle Jimmy gave me a demonstration one afternoon of something I’ll never forget. I was watching as he scythed down some thrustles (thistles) when he suddenly said, ‘See this,
noo.’

He pointed to an insect that had landed on the back of his hand and was now gorging itself on his blood. I stood transfixed as the little body grew redder and redder, and rounder and fatter,
until it suddenly toppled over and fell to the ground, dead as a doornail.

‘It’s a gleg,’ Uncle Jimmy told me, ‘and it damn well serves him richt.’

I’ve never felt any inclination to find out if it was only the man’s weather-beaten hand that was lethal or if my blood would have had the same effect, and I never will. Losing a
glegful of blood would be the death of me these days, not the gleg. If you are wondering what a gleg is, I have it on good authority that it is really a horsefly.

I did make one really good friend at Gowanhill, though – the orra loon – that is, the boy who did all the dirtiest, lowliest jobs about the place. I can’t
remember his name, but he was quite flattered that I followed him around like a puppy, and showed me all sorts of things. He taught me how to whistle with two fingers in my mouth; how to put a
broad blade of grass between my two thumbs and get a whistle from that; how to walk, then run, along the midden wall without falling in. The whistlings took me much practice to perfect, but walking
the midden had to be mastered right away. I was terrified of falling in the middle of all that muck – and I never did. Isn’t it marvellous what fear can make you do?

The best thing he taught me, the
pièce de résistance
, was to fill a pail to the brim with water and then spin round, faster and faster with it held out at right angles to
my body . . . without losing one drop. That was a marvellous achievement, but I never had occasion to show my prowess to anybody else. There was nowhere in Aberdeen that had the facility for such
an exhibition. Nor have I ever had any cause to try out my powers of whistling.

Gowanhill had a shop attached to it, run by Mrs Sutherland, the farmer’s wife. Auntie Teenie often sent me up for something, probably just to get me out from under her
feet, but one errand in particular sticks in my mind. ‘Jist ask for a half pun o’ tae’, she instructed me.

I ran to do her bidding – she wasn’t a bully by any means, but it was best not to get up her wrong side – and Mrs Sutherland beamed when I went in. ‘What can I do for you
today, Doris?’ she asked, seeing that I wasn’t brandishing a paper list.

‘I’ve to ask for a haffpunnotay,’ I told her, unwittingly stringing the unfamiliar words together, ‘but I don’t know what it is.’

She burst out laughing. It must have sounded funny me using mangled Doric words in my normally perfect English, but she managed to explain that what my aunt wanted was half a pound of tea. It
was mainly through living in Gowanhill that I became so familiar with the Doric that I often use in my writing, although my Granny and Granda helped a lot, as well. Mum used to frown at them for
speaking so broadly, but it was so natural to them that I lapped it up.

I did enjoy my stay in the cottar house, but I was still glad to go home. I hadn’t felt homesick once while I was away, but the minute I set foot inside my own house again, I began to
cry.

I had the surprise of my life that October. I was presented with a baby sister. At first, I loved the idea of playing with a moving, breathing doll, but I soon changed my mind
about that. This ‘doll’ wouldn’t stop yelling its head off if I picked it up, and I was ordered to leave it alone. Besides, it was red-faced and not particularly pretty, but it
improved as the weeks passed and I got around to thinking of it as her, she . . . or even Bertha. I was soon forced to admit that she was quite bonnie after all.

The only thing was, she got all the attention. Even Granny cooed over her, and sang songs to her like she used to do for me.

It really hurt that Bertha was now being held in my Granny’s bosey, although she did take me on her knee sometimes. ‘You needna be jealous o’ your wee sister,’ she would
say. ‘Your Mammy and Daddy still love you as much as ever, and so does your Granda and me.’

I wasn’t too happy about going to Gowanhill the next summer. Baby Bertha would have Mummy and Daddy all to herself, and they might not want me back at the end of the holidays. On the other
hand, I was glad to get away from nappies hanging all over the house when it was raining, and having to be quiet if the ‘wee darling’ was sleeping.

Nothing had changed at Gowanhill. Uncle Jimmy still took me to the farm with him occasionally so I’d be out of Auntie Teenie’s way, and on the whole, I enjoyed myself. There was a
Sunday School picnic on one of the Saturdays I was there, and although I didn’t attend the Sunday School, just the church, I was allowed to accompany the other cottar bairns.

This was a strange experience. The minister tended to the needs of two different parishes – Rathen (centred in the church the Christies attended) and the joint fishing villages of
Inverallochy and Cairnbulg. He usually held his service in the country in the forenoons one week and afternoons the next, allowing him to go to the coast in the opposite mornings and afternoons. I
wish I could have sat in on at least one service at the seaside. How did the two sets of villagers behave towards each other as one congregation, I wondered?

As far as I was concerned they were all one, because there was only the width of a road separating them, but the ‘Bulgers’ didn’t like to be associated with the people of
Inverallochy, and vice versa. The picnic was therefore divided into three factions, two of fisher folk and one lot of country bairns, including me by adoption.

The two dialects were completely diverse, the seafaring families inclined to add ‘ickie’ to every name and sound the ‘k’ in words like knee and knife. Here is a made-up
example. ‘Johnicke’s cut his k-nee wi’ a k-nife.’ I was intrigued, and spent most of the afternoon trying to listen to them speaking. It was quite difficult, since those
from each place kept to themselves, each group sitting apart from the other two.

On the last Saturday of that holiday, there was a wedding to attend. Meg Christie was marrying her lad. Mum had bought a lovely lemon taffeta dress for me, with a dear little cape round the
shoulders and frills round the sleeves and the hem. It sounds horrible, but I was very proud of it. After the actual ceremony in the house, while the adults were drinking a toast to the happy
couple and paying no attention to me, I remembered a tree along the road a bit where the branches were enticingly low.

Without a thought to my finery, I tiptoed off, scaling up that tree like the tomboy I had become when I was in the country. Alas, during my spell as a pirate scanning the horizon, I fell off the
rigging and trailed back to my mother, crying my eyes out because of my bleeding knee. Mother-like, she was only interested in the three-cornered tear in my dress. Enough said.

My last holiday at Gowanhill was when I was twelve. The big house next door had new occupants, including two girls, one a little older than I was, and the other a little
younger. They were tomboys par excellence and we spent every day, all day, doing things we shouldn’t. We never forgot to go back for something to eat, of course, but we had a marvellous time.
Auntie Teenie was so relieved to have me taken off her hands that she got out of the habit of checking if I had washed myself, and so I made a few dummy splashes with my hands in the basin every
morning and night, without letting the water touch any other part of me. I only had to be careful on Sundays, because she inspected every inch of me before we went to church.

Church was the Church of Scotland at Rathen, over the hill from Gowanhill, and in the pew in front of the Christies there always sat a very tall man, so tall that I couldn’t see the
minister even when he was up in the pulpit. This meant that I had to find somewhere else to focus my attention. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the man’s head, completely devoid
of hair (long before this became fashionable and probably due to alopecia) and bright red from constant exposure to the weather, was a skating rink for flies – attracting them in swarms. Time
flew much quicker for me that year than normal, though I still can’t believe that he wasn’t aware of their antics.

At last, the service ended and we set off over the hill again, Uncle Jimmy looking most uncomfortable in his Sunday suit and the high collar that his wife starched until it was so stiff and hard
that it looked to be made of cardboard. His bowler sat ill upon his bushy grey locks and his shoes, polished until I could see my face in them, clearly hurt his feet, for he grimaced with almost
every step. Auntie Teenie wore a long black coat atop her Sunday sprigged frock, and her laced shoes seemed to be bothering her, as well. She must have suffered from corns or bunions, maybe both,
but she would never admit to any aches or pains.