Gift from the Gallowgate (5 page)

On the Sunday my parents were coming to take me home, of course, we didn’t go to church. Auntie Teenie was preparing an impressive meal for them, so I sneaked out to my friends without
washing at all, as I had done every day that week. When I went back at dinnertime, the Erskine was there at the door. Mum and Dad had arrived . . . and Bertha, too. I was surprisingly pleased to
see her.

‘Oh, you’ve really got sunburnt this year,’ my mother exclaimed when I ran to give her a hug.

‘She’s hardly been a meenit inside the hoose,’ Auntie Teenie nodded.

Unfortunately, as has been proved to me over and over again, misdemeanours will always be found out. When we arrived home, quite late in the evening, I burst into tears, as usual, but this time,
Mum spotted the pale channels the tears were leaving behind them and rounded on me angrily.

‘Just look at you! It’s not sunburn – it’s dirt! Go and wash yourself thoroughly, my lady! The fire hasn’t been on and there’s no hot water, so use the kettle
I was boiling to make some tea – but bring it right back. I’m gasping for a drink.’

Meekly, I got the kettle and went into the bathroom, also taking with me the book Auntie Teenie had said I could take home with me. It had belonged to her Jean and was all about brave Belgian
children in the First World War, and I loved to picture me as the heroine who saved a company of soldiers by carrying a message.

That reminds me of a story that used to be told – a joke, really. The message ‘Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance’ was relayed along a line of soldiers, but by
the time it reached the person who had to send it out by wireless, it had become, ‘Send three-and-fourpence, we’re going to a dance.’

I filled the sink with hot water, took the kettle through to my mother and went back to sit down and read. I’ve always been a bookworm, and I was oblivious to the time ticking away.

When Dad called, ‘Are you nearly finished in there?’ I answered, ‘Nearly. Just my legs to wash.’

After another five minutes, he called again, ‘Come out of there this minute. I’ve to get up early in the morning, remember.’

‘Just coming.’ I turned another page but, suddenly, the light went out.

I must admit that I have always been terrified of the dark, so, as my mother said, I shot out of the bathroom like a scalded cat, in time to see my dad shutting the door to the electric meter
cupboard.

Realising that he had switched off the light on purpose, I shouted, ‘I hate you!’ and ran upstairs to my bed – still filthy.

I have never forgotten those words. They were the last I ever said to him.

Going back a few years, our Sundays were usually spent with my father’s family in one of the many lovely spots that we discovered. Mostly motorcycle combinations at
first, with one or two cars, the ages stretched from babies to boys and girls in their teens, plus parents in their thirties and forties. As we all grew older, so changes came in the vehicles.
Motorbikes were changed for cars, big, small or somewhere in-between.

Deeside was a favourite trip, perhaps going as far as Ballater or Braemar, where the scenery is impressively beautiful, and the mountains looked down on us with benign eyes. They probably
wouldn’t have been so welcoming in the winter, of course, totally covered with snow. Parked in a clearing in the pine trees, we often saw animals not known in the city. In the early thirties,
the Forsyth family, like so many others, went to Crathie to see the young princesses accompanying their grandparents to church. That was something we children really looked for ward to. They
weren’t ordinary human beings like us, they were more like beautifully dressed dolls, puppets that waved to us in genteel acknowledgement of our presence and we waved back, energetically and
noisily, like the ragamuffins we were.

Donside was different; still bonny but with a different feel to it. Everything was wilder, the river itself, the trees, the hillsides, the not-so-far-off mountains. But we could still find
satisfactory places to eat our picnics.

We travelled all round the northeast of Scotland, into the highlands or along the coast, where we found a lovely secluded area near the village of Pennan – where the film
Local
Hero
would be made many years later. We didn’t go down the perpendicular road to the village – at least it looked perpendicular to me. Not very far along from there, the road we
were on dipped until we were on a level with a wide bay. There was a beach, caves for us to explore, the sea to paddle in, a convenient stretch of grass to set out our dishes and eatables. We went
there quite a lot after that. I was the youngest of the cousins for years, but I doggedly went whither the others went, climbing rocks, exploring the caves, scraped elbows and knees ignored. I was
aware that some of the older boys looked on me as a bit of a hindrance, so I was determined to prove I could do anything they could do.

We have a photograph of us all sitting around an old seaman in a peaked cap and navy gansey, being regaled with his yarns of derring-do, smugglers and pirates, dodging the coastguards and
customs men, possibly all inventions of his own. He had probably come to investigate the city folk who were making so much noise enjoying themselves, and had fallen, as so many did, for the easy
camaraderie that existed between them. The Forsyths were a high-spirited lot taken
en masse
, but it was all fun with them, nothing out of place. He had likely been as fascinated with us as
we were with him. Plus, each woman pressed something on him to eat and drink, and he never went away without a coin or two in his hand.

On one particular Sunday that I recall, we went inland for a change, and found a nice picnic spot at Cockbridge, the source of the River Don. There was a fairly large flat
area, the burn (that was all the river was at that point), being small enough to jump across, if we were careful. There would have been at least five packed cars, with dickey seats carrying two or
three kids, and one motorbike with a sidecar, so there was a fair amount of people. The three large aunties obligingly ‘cawed’ the clothes ropes they had brought for the young ones to
skip with, while the men and the lads played football.

Completely exhausted after all the exertion, most of us hunkered down on the riverbank and laved the water up to cool our faces. There was a lot of joking going on until one of the young men,
very handsome with fair curly hair, let out a roar of dismay, then jumped up with his hands clapped over his mouth.

Willie was Auntie Vi’s young man – not quite twenty, she was the baby of the Forsyths – and his dentures had fallen into the fast-flowing water. Well, we all exploded with
laughter and scarpered after him as he raced along the bank, except Vi, who hadn’t known his teeth were false. (This has always bothered me. Had he never kissed her?) Thus ended a beautiful
romance, and I often wondered if any of the men fishing downstream for salmon had had an unwelcome catch.

On another Sunday – I can’t give months or years for any of our trips; they’re just lumped together in my memory – we were making for Inverness. By this
time, there was more traffic on the road and the men decided that each vehicle should go on its own and we would all meet up at a spot just outside the town itself. The others managed to keep to
the plan, but we were held up by having a puncture . . . with a most upsetting outcome.

Firstly, Dad got one Primus going before changing the wheel. While he was so occupied, Mum pared the tatties in water we got from a nearby burn, brought them to the boil and then picked some
wild flowers with me until they were ready. By this time, Dad had set up the second Primus and was frying the sausages and bacon, the smell, as my Granda would have said, going round our hearts
like a hairy worm, and making our mouths water in anticipation of a lovely feast. It’s strange how much hungrier a person gets in the open air.

This was when Mum lifted the pot off the heat to bree the tatties (drain the water by holding the lid on and turning the pan upside down). Picture the scene, if you can. The car was parked on
the grass, she was on the sandy verge of the road, and when the steam scalded her hand she let go with a yell. The noise made my dad jump to see what was wrong, knocking against the handle of the
frying pan, which landed on the ground, too . . . upside down, naturally.

So potatoes, sausages and bacon were well entrenched in the sandy ground, fit for neither man nor beast. Dad tried washing them with the can of water meant for making a pot of tea but it
didn’t work; a mouthful of sandy-coated tatties wasn’t exactly appetising. Even a bite of one of Forsyth’s best sausages (for which they had won an award a year or so earlier) was
every bit as inedible, no matter how nutritious it may have been.

We had nothing left to eat; no water to make tea, only a packet of Abernethy biscuits which are on the dry side with nothing to wash them down. It was also Sunday, remember, so there were no
shops open on the road. Not only that, Mum was offended that Dad’s first thought had been for the food rather than for her scalded hand, so there was a distinct coolness in the air as we
carried on to Inverness.

By the time we joined the others, they had eaten all their supplies and, I’m sorry to say, thought that our mishaps were absolutely hilarious. I’ll leave you to guess what happened
when we went home. My mother did not have the Forsyth sense of humour.

Another outing could have had a more serious outcome. The men had made up their minds to go south for a change – they always made all the decisions – and we set off
for Kirriemuir, the birthplace of J.M. Barrie, the great Scottish writer. At that time, there was nothing to advertise this fact, but we had been told where to look for the little window (high up
in the gable of the house where he was born) that had been his inspiration for
A Window in Thrums.
He also wrote
The Little Minister
, which, in addition to being a wonderful
story, also gives a description of life in the small village at the turn of the nineteenth century. His best-known work is, of course,
Peter Pan,
still a firm favourite with children.

After having a brief walk around, we piled back into the cars to look for a place to have our picnic. Apart from going through Blairgowrie into the moors and the mountains, I remember only one
incident. This road, twisting and turning in hairpin bends to avoid natural obstacles, culminated in the notorious Devil’s Elbow before it reached Braemar and Deeside.

All was going well with the cavalcade of around five or six vehicles until we were halfway up the first section of the ‘elbow’, with Uncle Billy leading. The ascent was so steep (one
in three or even less) that it was first or second gear all the way, and the engines were loud in their protests. It sounded as if they were about to blow up at any moment and the cars would be
catapulted right back to the foot of the hill, if they weren’t smashed to pieces before that. Auntie Ina, Billy’s wife, a thin nervous type even at the best of times, was so scared that
she opened the door of the Lagonda and got out – quite easy because it was just crawling.

‘You stupid idiot!’ shouted my father, coming up behind her, and before she (or my mother) knew what was happening, he had lifted her off her feet and held her under the arms on the
outside of the car until we reached the top.

I don’t know how Dad managed this dangerous operation, driving with only one hand on the steering-wheel and two almost hysterical women bawling in his ears with fear, but manage he did.
When we reached level ground once more, two separate marital disagreements took off, as one husband berated his wife for her lack of confidence in him, and one wife lambasted her man for putting
his wife and daughter in danger. The other drivers and their passengers all came out and stood by, content to watch because there was no chance of fisticuffs. Happy days!

We took Granny and Granda out on occasional Sundays – just by ourselves. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to join the happy-go-lucky Forsyths, merely that Mum
thought it best for her parents to enjoy peace and quiet when they were having a picnic. We sometimes went up Brimmond Hill – which I can see these days from the window of my sixth floor
flat. In the 1920s and ’30s, or even as late as the ’50s, Brimmond was well away from the city, and it certainly was peaceful there – if you could find a comfor table spot where
the heather didn’t penetrate your clothes and you didn’t keep sliding downwards.

Although I tended to be a bit of an extrovert then, I enjoyed those quiet afternoons with my beloved Granny and Granda . . . and my Uncle Doug; the baby Mum didn’t know about, remember,
and, being born on Hogmanay 1919, only two and a half years older than me. We were brought up almost as brother and sister, as you shall see, later.

I don’t know which of the Forsyths, or their spouses, hired the huge wooden building at Cullerlie Farm in Garlogie. The hirer is a mystery because all the clan took
advantage of it . . . and at the same time, so there must have been some squeezing in.

Dad often took Mum and me out to visit – I don’t think we ever stayed overnight, Mum wasn’t the kind to ‘muck in’ like that. She was always dressed neatly, and had
me dressed to the nines, so we stand out like sore thumbs in all the photographs. I can’t explain this side of her, because we also have snaps which show her, and me, looking like unkempt
tinks, having a few days in Keith with one of her friends.

Mrs Reid, whose mother we stayed with in Keith, lived on the same floor as us in Rosemount Viaduct and they had two daughters, Margaret, almost a year older than I was, and Patsy, almost a year
younger. We were all great pals, the two husbands included, but sadly, they emigrated to New Zealand around 1927.

Mrs Reid (I don’t know her Christian name) corresponded from Wanganui (I was so intrigued by this name that I used it in
The Brow of the Gallowgate
), and after she died, Margaret
kept sending Mum a card at Christmas with a little note enclosed. These, too, eventually stopped, whatever the reason.