Shoes Were For Sunday (11 page)

Everyone else had satchels or leather cases, but not me. When the old satchel I’d inherited from somebody else at last fell to bits, just as I was transferring to the higher school, a man in my mother’s workshop in the Railways made me a perfect little case of wood, and even added a little plate to it with my name. It was stained dark brown, and it seemed to me
far
better than leather, because I could stand on it in emergency without harming it a bit, and it could be buffed up with boot polish to a gleaming mahogany shade. I liked its originality and I liked its stout strength, and I loved its little name-plate.

For the final school party, when I was about to leave that school, Mother and I racked our brains to concoct something which would be worthy of the dux of the school. We were as hard up as ever, of course, so it would have to be something we could make from the simplest of materials. A stroll past Margaret Hunter’s, then the best children’s shop in Glasgow, revealed a dream of a dress in the window, composed of yards and yards of narrow frilling and looking like the fairy on top of the Xmas tree. My mother stared at it intently, counting the rows, observing how the neckline was cut, how the sleeves fitted, where the waist was darted.

She counted the money in her purse, went next door to a big emporium stocking all sorts of materials, and came out with a huge parcel, bulky but very light to carry. ‘Aye this will take me a’ ma time,’ she observed,
‘for it will all have to be sewn in separate rows, but I think I can manage it for the party.’ Every night when she came in from work she’d stitch those frills with tiny perfect strokes, and I’d hang over her, counting how many we still had to go before we could start shaping it into a dress. At last she had enough and we could pin it to its muslin base.

The night before the party I tried it on. It was perfect. My cheeks were flushed with pleasure, especially as my mother had somehow managed to add the last touch of elegance – a silver bow with narrow streamers fastening off the neckline. The party of course was a joy. Lots to eat, splendid games, prizes to be collected, and school holidays to follow. When I came home my mother was waiting. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Mother,’ I burst out, ‘my teacher asked me if you’d bought my dress from Margaret Hunter’s.’ We stared at each other. A great smile spread over my mother’s tired face. ‘Margaret Hunter’s,’ she said dreamily. ‘Aye, I never thought in my wildest dreams my home-made dress would be mistaken for a shop one. It was well worth the effort, well worth it.’

All of us in the tenements took great care of our clothes. We knew how hard they were to come by, and we changed out of our school clothes the minute we reached home, without having to be told. We all had tough hand-knitted jerseys which the girls wore over tweed skirts, and the boys over old trousers for back-court games, while for Sundays and special visiting to relatives and friends we had a ‘best’ outfit, which we
guarded and cared for like mink. How splendid those Sunday clothes seemed as we laid them out on the bed, before getting ready for church or Sunday School. The boys, in their dashing sailor suits, seemed like entirely different creatures from their wild weekday selves, as they walked sedately on either side of me.

In summer I felt elegant beyond belief in a neat navy suit, Tussore silk blouse, little white socks and flat lacing shoes. Sometimes the shoes varied a little, and might have a strap across the instep, but whether strap or laces, they magically seemed to lend grace to my legs which, during the week, knew only the stout support of long lacing boots. Our mothers were firmly convinced that boots kept young ankles well shaped and supported, and who knows they may have been right, for certainly all of us seemed to have limbs like race-horses with trim, strong ankles.

In winter the suits were carefully brushed and put to the back of the wardrobe, and out came the heavy coats for the boys and myself. From the box on top of the wardrobe my black velour hat was brought out, and its elastic checked for strength and stretchiness, to make sure it would stay firmly anchored at all times. In church a favourite pastime during a dull sermon was to draw the elastic in a wide Vee out from the chin, and let it fly with a satisfactory ‘ping’ over the lips. We had to be careful though, for a too-loud twanging noise brought a sharp rap on the head from the nearest adult.

We didn’t seem to grow very fast, for I remember
wearing the same clothes year in, year out. Mind you, they had been prudently bought ‘for growth’, and were only replaced when the last inch of hem had been let down, and the last tuck removed from the sleeves.

Even in our frugal district, though, there were the feckless ones. There were also those so unskilled that they knew long stretches of unemployment. The children of such families wore their school clothes for back-court games, for they had no others to change into, and they gradually reached a state of shabbiness and tatters which were considered a disgrace by the teachers. At last a day arrived when the unkempt ones would be called out to the teacher’s desk, and questions whispered about their financial position.

Poor as we all were, we were fiercely independent, and we others, sitting safely at our desks, decently clad in well-preserved school clothes, would lower our eyes in sympathy for our ragged playmates. We knew the teacher was going to offer a form of application for ‘Parish clothes’ and we shuddered. The Parish clothes were made from scratchy woollen material, with a built-in itchy quality which made them agony to wear, and the genius who thought up the dull grey porridgy colour should have had a medal for successful depression of the human spirit. These clothes were instantly recognizable by their ugliness and harsh durability, and anyone unfortunate enough to have to wear them avoided the rest of us in the playground, in case a tactless enemy might jeer the hated words ‘Parish clothes’.

We each of us rejoiced that our own parents were thrifty and such good managers that we could wear our own clothes, washed and mended and let down though they often were, with pride and ownership. To have to be dependent on the Parish for clothes seemed to us a fate worse than death.

But if we liked to wear our own clothes and buy our own jotters we had no qualms about accepting the splendid slates which the school provided. There were slots at the back of our desks where we slid the slates when we’d finished with them, and an almighty clatter they made when we pushed them home at the end of the lesson.

An old slate pencil, broken into use, was a great joy, but a new one, light grey and chalky looking, didn’t seem right at all until it had been wiped clean of its powdery bloom by our clutching fingers, and was smooth and black and shiny and entirely satisfactory as it skimmed over the slate.

Sometimes a piece of grit made the pencil squeak abominably, and my teeth would grate and my spine shudder at the piercing sound. A new one was hurriedly produced by the teacher, without even having to ask, for she was even more sensitive to this scraping than we were.

On wintry days the slate struck chill on the hand which leaned on it, and a jersey sleeve made a comforting layer between hand and slate when it was pulled down snugly over the fingers. In summer a moist palm
left little shadows of steamy darkness on the slate, and made it difficult for us to write.

Unlike the teacher with her blackboard, we didn’t have velvet pads for wiping the slate clean. Hideously smelling damp sponges or damp flannels were kept by each of us in little tin boxes, usually discarded tobacco or sweetie tins, depending on whether they’d been begged from dads or grannies. These cloths were supposed to be damped with water before we left home, but as often as not we forgot. Then there was many a surreptitious spit to get them wet enough to wipe our slates, and they must have harboured germs by the million. In the course of time the damp contents rusted the inside of the boxes, and the smell was awful. Somehow one grew used to the peculiar odour of one’s own sponge when the lid was opened, and it was only when the nose twitched at the whiff of a neighbour’s box that the pungent aroma seemed revolting. I remember my favourite tin box was a beautiful pale blue which had once held Grannie’s Christmas butterscotch, and Grannie allowed me, as a special favour, to cut off a piece of our soft new sponge to match this splendid container, instead of the wee bit of flannel clout I usually carried. With what pride I flourished my box as I drew it from my desk each morning, and I was convinced it was the envy of the class.

I loved my slate. Compared with Vere Foster, with its ink and its ruled lines which allowed no mistake to go unnoticed, there was something almost light-hearted in
working with materials which could so easily be corrected, with no trace left to tell the tale. Vere Foster had a perfection and a discipline which reduced the whole room to utter silence while we laboured to achieve the copper-plate writing it demanded. The top line showed a virtuous sentiment in perfect handwriting, ‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘A burnt child fears the fire’, ‘Virtue is its own reward’, or ‘Practice makes perfect’. On the ruled lines immediately below, we had to copy the sentence, using fine up-strokes and heavy down-strokes, and this exercise was to instruct us in the art of beautiful handwriting. There was no rubbing out tolerated, for we used ink, and you could have danced to the rhythm of our pounding hearts as we toiled, terrified to spoil this beautiful exercise book.

Slates were a blessed relief after such a strain. A wee bit of a spit, and who could guess that you’d had second thoughts about that sum, or this spelling? It was the perfect embodiment of the second chance, and it seemed to me wonderfully generous of the schools to lend us such an enjoyable instrument of learning.

We always had Bible teaching first thing in the morning at school, and one of the phrases which greatly puzzled me was ‘entertaining angels unaware’. How could anybody be unaware of entertaining an angel, I thought? Surely they would be instantly recognizable by their beautiful white wings, and the clouds of glory round their heads? It never occurred to me that angelic qualities could be found in the most unlikely guises,
hiding under very ordinary voices and in bustling everyday bodies.

My angel, as it turned out, hid inside the little figure of my school-teacher, Miss McKenzie. To me she was always a little old lady, with her roly-poly plumpness, her slightly bowed legs, grey hair framing a round rosy face and caught up in an old-fashioned bun on top of her head. Steady blue-grey eyes watched us all shrewdly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles, and although her voice was soft and seldom raised, she kept us all in firm control.

She seemed so ancient that I was astounded to hear her say one morning, in quiet explanation when she was a few minutes late, that she had been delayed waiting for the doctor to call to attend to her mother. Her mother! Surely she must be about a hundred! In my surprise at discovering such an old lady as my teacher could have a mother still alive, it never crossed my mind to wonder how she managed to look after such an ancient parent, and cope with the exhausting task of teaching every day. And a marvellous teacher she was. She had the gift of exciting us to desire knowledge for its own sake, quite apart from that needed for examinations, and our reading went far beyond the humdrum authors we’d have found for ourselves, if left to our own devices.

I, a natural born swot, was a great favourite of hers. This was a mixed blessing, which rather embarrassed me, for ‘teacher’s pet’ was an insult in the tenements.
Miss McKenzie refused to be kept at arm’s length though, for she seemed to sense something in me which needed encouragement. She was greatly surprised to discover, when we acted out our little bits of Shakespeare, that I had a passionate interest in the theatre. She knew, of course, that my mother was a widow with few pennies to spare for theatres, so she it was who took me to a matinée one marvellous Saturday, to see Shakespeare performed as it ought to be, in a real theatre in the town.

It felt very strange to be meeting Miss McKenzie at the tram-stop, dressed in my best coat, and the tammy Grannie had knitted. I was terrified any of my school friends would see us and jeer ‘Teacher’s pet’, which might put my teacher off the whole idea of taking me to the theatre, but mercifully they were all at the penny matinée, so we were safe. Although I felt a bit ill-at-ease sitting so close to her on the tram seat, I had to say something, so I launched into an account of how my mother had read my teacup the night before and had predicted a disappointment for me, and I’d prayed that the disappointment might not be that something would prevent us from seeing Shakespeare. Miss McKenzie seemed to have trouble with a cough just then, and even had to wipe her eyes, and I wondered if she was laughing at me. When I told Grannie about this later she was scandalized that I’d told my teacher about us believing in teacup fortunes. ‘She’ll think we’re a lot o’ heathens,’ declared Grannie. ‘When’ll ye learn to haud yer tongue.’

Although I basked in Miss McKenzie’s approval, I never really felt very close to her. We all held our teachers in some awe, and it never dawned on me to ask her advice as to what I should do when I left school. Surely there was only one thing to do? Get a job and earn money to add to the household purse as quickly as possible. What sort of job? Oh, if only I were lucky enough, it could be the Cooperative offices, a highly prized post in our district. I’d start as an office girl, and go to night classes to try to master the mysteries of office routine. If I couldn’t get in there it would have to be a shop.

But Miss McKenzie had other ideas. We in our house knew nothing of scholarships for fatherless children. The idea of a child from a working-class household going to college was the very stuff of story-books, and had nothing to do with the business of living as we knew it.

Unknown to us, she bullied the headmaster into putting my name forward for a special scholarship open to children who showed some promise, and who would benefit from further education. As I was the school dux, he agreed, although he was a bit worried about the expense of keeping me at college for a whole year from my mother’s point of view. No earnings from me, and fare and clothes to be covered, for, of course, only the fees would be paid if I won.