Shoes Were For Sunday (16 page)

Some of the more opulent girls, who actually went to the seaside every summer, possessed their own bathing suits, but most of us hired a suit for a penny. The ‘costumes’, as we called them, were all the same size, and it depended on the size of the wearer whether the
costume was short or long, tight or floppy. As one of the smallest girls in the neighbourhood, mine was held up in front by two huge safety pins on each shoulder, but even so the plunging neckline was all too revealing of my narrow chest, and the legs hung down unfashionably over my knees. But who cared? The laughter and derisive comments were all part of the fun. I had coaxed Grannie to buy me a natty black and white check rubber cap to protect my curls, and this sign of class earned me the greatest respect from my chums, and quenched their laughter over my floppy costume.
Their
caps were mere helmet affairs which pressed ears tightly to scalp and almost completely deafened them, but mine had elastic round the edge and gave me the tremendous advantage, I thought, of missing
nothing
of the yelling and joyous joking which was the non-stop accompaniment of our visits to the baths.

Once stripped, some would jump in recklessly from the side of the pond without even testing the water with an exploratory toe. Others cautiously descended the three or four steps at the shallow end and then gently lowered themselves into the water. A few compromised, and stood on the top step at the shallow end and ‘scooshed’ forward, with tremendous squealing from everyone in their path as the water drenched them.

There were rings suspended from the ceiling on long ropes, from which we would swing like monkeys, high over the water. It was a great dare to use the rings over
the deep end of the pond, for if the arms tired and we were forced to drop into the water, we’d have to be dragged gasping to the side by one of the bigger girls. Only a few could dive, and the rest would gaze awe-struck as some large girl self-consciously mounted the dale (our name for the high diving board) and stood poised, before leaping down in what, to us, was a magnificent dive and an inspiring deed of courage.

When we decided we had had enough of our water frolics, i.e., when our lips were blue with cold, what bliss to return to our boxes and scrub our shivering bodies with the hard towel we had been given with our entrance ticket, and to plunge chattering teeth into the crisp butteriness of the roll we’d brought with us as our ‘chittering bite’. Nothing ever tasted quite so delicious as that roll, eaten in that particular atmosphere, and never was undervest so comforting to the skin as the one pulled over our heads in the dank air of the little boxes.

On the way home, the lucky ones with a ha’penny or a penny to spend usually stopped at the little baker’s shop on the corner, and the woman filled their outstretched jerseys, which they held out like a miniature tarpaulin, with broken biscuits. You didn’t get a paper bag for a ha’penny or a penny purchase, and anyway we all felt it was
far
better value to get handfuls tossed into a baggy jersey, and there was always plenty for all of us. The biscuits were mostly plain, but what a find to discover a cream fragment among the digestives!

Later, when we had swimming lessons at school, the
baths seemed quite different at three o’clock in the afternoon, and although we now had proper swimming instruction and learned to keep ourselves afloat, it lacked the magic of the morning visits.

Later still, as we grew older, we would go along in the evening, and again the atmosphere was entirely changed. Standing in the lamp-lit street, queuing to get in, we would hear the voices and shouts of those already in the pond, sounds which echoed strangely into the glass roof. And when we finally got inside, the bath looked so different under artificial lighting that we wondered uneasily if it could indeed be the scene of our childish ploys.

It was about this time that we penetrated the mystery of the other side of the bath building. We were getting too big now for the zinc bath at home, and were given fourpence on Fridays to have a hot bath. This was indeed luxury. The fourpence admitted us to the delicious warmth of the cubicles, and provided a rough towel for drying. There were degrees of grandeur, and a first-class bath cost ninepence. But beyond seeing a softer, whiter, fluffier towel, I never discovered what other delights were in store. Spending more than fourpence on a bath was forever beyond both purse and imagination.

There was always a queue, and we sat on wooden benches alongside the cubicles and enjoyed watching the leisurely movements of the woman attendant as she swished water along the stone floors to keep them
clean, and we listened dreamily as she bade slow bathers to ‘Hurry up, there’s mair than you wantin’ in the night’.

There were no taps on the baths, only projecting pieces of metal which had to be turned with the attendant’s iron key. This was no doubt to prevent extravagance and overflowing, but the result of having no control over the water could be agonizing. No matter how accurately one felt the temperature of the water had been judged, when one had been asked to ‘See if this is aw right’, the moment the attendant disappeared, and one submerged the body gingerly, it was only too painfully brought home that judgement had been badly at fault, and there would be a yell as the scalding water reached the tenderness of the waist, and an imploring screech, ‘Oh come
back
, missus, ah’m bein’ roastit.’ The attendant, used to such behaviour, ignored the cries as long as possible, partly to teach us a lesson and partly because she had duties elsewhere, but when she could stand the shouting no longer she would return, fling open the door with her pass-key and stand glaring balefully in the doorway. A towel would be hastily draped round the scarlet torso, as she fiercely turned on a jet of cold water. ‘Noo, pit yer feet in this time, you silly wee besom, and make sure it’s cauld enough,’ she would command, adding: ‘Fur ah’m no’ comin’ back
again
. Ah’ve the hale baths tae attend tae, an’ ah’m no’ dancin’ attendance on you, so don’t think it!’

Meekly a toe would be thrust from the folds of the
towel, and the water tested. ‘Oh aye, it’s a’ right this time’, and she would depart, muttering, ‘It better be!’

If a mistake had been made a second time, it just had to be endured. To face that woman’s wrath twice was not to be contemplated. So if the water was still too hot, the only solution was to press the cold spray above the bath into service. This was infuriatingly slow and never seemed to make the least difference to the temperature of the water, and the moment those waiting outside heard the spray, they knew what had happened and there would be shouts, ‘Hurry up you, are you in there fur the night!’

The soap was coarse and yellow, the floor was stone, and the towel was hard, but what luxury it seemed to be able to wallow in a long ‘wally’ bath, and feel a gentle sleepiness steal over one as familiar voices rose and fell on every side, and chums called to each other through the partitions.

There were squeals of mock terror when the final cold spray was applied to keep one from catching cold on the way home, and beatific smiles on our pink steamy faces when we at last emerged, scrubbed, rinsed and dried, and more than ready for a penny-worth of chips to eat as we walked home.

We didn’t manage to have a holiday every year, but when my mother decided that, yes, she thought she could maybe afford one this year, we talked of nothing else for weeks beforehand. We’d sit round the table when my mother came in from work at night and pore over the seaside advertisements in the paper. The ones which drew us like magnets were usually worded, ‘Room and kitchen to let, Fair Fortnight, no linen supplied, attendance if desired, Low door, own key’. The lure lay in the last words. Low door, own key. A low door which opened on to a little side street that ran down to the sea. To us, born and reared in tenements, used to climbing miles of stairs in the course of the year, the excitement of walking right from the street over a threshold which led straight to the living-room was a thrill of which we never tired. It was almost like living on the exciting bustling pavement itself, and for my mother and Grannie it seemed like playing at housekeeping.

The minute we got out of the train we would race along the street ahead of Mother and Grannie, searching for the number of our own particular low door. Once, to my joy, our low door was fronted by a
red
doorstep. This was pure fantasy. I didn’t know it was achieved by the use of red pipeclay, and I doubt if I would have believed it if anybody had told me. It was our magic seaside doorstep and I loved it. As soon as the door was opened, we children flew round the house, examining every drawer, every cupboard, the fancy taps on the sink, the fancy handles on the door. Everything was considered ‘fancy’ which differed from our own at home. While Mother and Grannie laid out our own clean linen and saw to the beds we were sent to the nearest shops to buy something for the tea.

Not for us the doubtful swank of sitting down to somebody else’s cooking. We liked to buy and cook our own food. Why, the day might have been blighted from the start if we had been forced to accept what somebody else considered a suitable breakfast, which could be
kippers
, or, worse,
steamed fish
! It was always eggs for us, lovely fresh country eggs, for the country was no farther away than the end of the beach, and we could buy them from the farms any day. My mother had a whole egg, Grannie and I one between us, and the boys one between them, so half a dozen did us for two meals.

It was never any trouble to persuade us to run errands on holidays, for the shops were all so different from those at home. How absorbing it was to watch the man slice the bacon by hand instead of putting it into a machine. And didn’t the milk taste more creamy and satisfying when it came out of a little tap on the side of a huge churn, carried on a cart, pulled by a donkey?
Chips from a cart lit by paraffin flares were twice as good as those from a shop, and what triumph to discover for ourselves a bakery which sold the crispest rolls in town, and which served them piping hot, in a bag with scarlet lettering, when we went down to buy them before breakfast each morning.

We worked cheerfully in the fields to help the farmer, regarding the whole thing as adventurous play, and were incredulous when we were given a bag of peas or strawberries as our reward. Our reward for what? For enjoying ourselves? This was paradise indeed. We were allowed by the farmer to go into the fields after the potato-pickers had finished, and keep for ourselves the tiny potatoes which had been left behind as too small to be worth lifting. With these my mother made chips for us, but we had to clean and scrape them ourselves, for she said they were far too fiddling for her. So the three of us would drape ourselves on top of sink and dresser, scraping and scrubbing the marble-sized potatoes, cutting them into minute slices, and at last, blissfully devour plates full of miniature fairy chips.

Seaside ice-cream had a taste all of its own too, served between wafers and biscuits intriguingly different from those at home. Some of the ice-cream may not even have been so good as our own Tallies in Glasgow, but it held fascination for us because it was different. Without ever being told, we knew it was the change which was the best part of our holiday.

The sea was a joy, of course, and distances so
impossible to measure in that wide expanse of ocean that I caused great amusement by vowing, the first day we arrived at Girvan, that I was going to paddle out to Ailsa Craig the minute I’d swallowed my tea. I refused to believe it was all of thirteen miles! And it only a wee speck on the map too, and practically joined to the coast.

How golden the sands were, after the earth of our tenement back courts. We made forts, and castles, and leaped from the wall running alongside, and turned somersaults of sheer delight, and after our games, discovered that salt water was far more buoyant than the baths at home, and we could swim satisfying distances without putting our feet down. When we came out, teeth chattering and blue with cold, my mother shuddered and wondered how we could find pleasure in such icy waters. But to have gone to the seaside and
not
gone into the sea would have been unthinkable, and we pitied the grown-ups who wouldn’t take off their clothes and join us in our Spartan splashing.

The pierrots at the end of the sands provided glamorous entertainment. We never went inside the railed-off enclosure, of course, but pressed against the railings and drank in every word and noted every gesture. We loved each member devotedly, but never dreamt of asking for autographs. To us they were beings from another world, and it was unimaginable that we could speak to them. We went to every performance, and knew the repertoire as well as they did, but the moment
one of the company came round with the little box for contributions, we vanished. We had no money to give away to people who seemed to us so rich and prosperous, and anyway the ‘toffs’ sitting inside the enclosure must have contributed
hundreds
of sixpences.

We would have stayed at the seaside all day long, but my mother and Grannie grew tired of sitting there, and we were taken into the countryside on long walks. It seemed all wrong to be walking away from the sea, but soon we were climbing trees, and searching for wild flowers, and hoping Grannie would soon decide she must have a glass of milk and a wee rest. This meant the treat of a visit to a farmhouse, with milk ‘straight from the cow’ and, on very special occasions, cakes and scones to go with the milk. These treats usually came almost at the end of the holiday, when my mother would look into her purse, count up her money, and decide it was safe to have a little spree. We had already paid for our wee house, so all that was left in the purse was spending money.

And always, on the last day of the holiday, we went to one of the big local houses which had a card on the gate saying, ‘Flowers for sale – a shilling a bunch.’ We were allowed to stroll round the garden, and Grannie and I made a slow and careful selection of beautiful, scented, old-fashioned cottage flowers to take back with us to our tenement, to remind us of the happy days spent in our own dear wee house, with its low door and its own key.