Gift from the Gallowgate (27 page)

He turned and winked before closing the door behind him. In his position, of course he would send his daughters to a private girls’ school, and his stance of being against such
establishments had been so much hot air. Again, I was the only one who saw the funny side of this; the rest were angry at being fooled.

Lillias, who had been at Commercial College with me, was also in the same section at TC, and because she had left school two years earlier, she considered the other girls too
young for her. I’ve a feeling that she was afraid that I’d be odd one out – twenty-three won’t divide into pairs even if you’re a genius at Maths – but we became
very close friends, having a little stroll round the shops every day after we had lunch in the canteen, or, if it was bad weather, sitting in the huge common room with whoever else was there.
Before I go any further, I must tell you that we are still as close, perhaps even closer, today as we were then. She and her husband, now retired as professor at Cardiff University, come to see us
every August at the end of their month’s holiday in Cullen.

Getting back to my tale, it happened that Lillias had to go home one lunchtime, and I went window-shopping on my own. I was walking up George Street when I decided to cross to a ladies’
dress shop at the other side, and stepped off the pavement without thinking.

I heard nothing behind me, but when I felt an awful thump in my back, I thought I’d been hit by a bus. Fortunately, it was only a boy on a bicycle, but even so, I was knocked to the
ground. I must have passed out for a moment or two, because when I realised what was going on, I was surrounded by anxious women clamouring to help me to my feet.

As I am sure many of you have done, I felt so embarrassed, and foolish, that I shrugged off all help and got up, rather shakily, by myself. The crowd dispersed to go their various ways . . .
except one old lady who looked as though she didn’t have two ha’pennies to rub together.

She took hold of my arm as I negotiated the kerb and astounded me by saying, ‘I’ve got a bottle o’ brandy in my bag. Would you like a wee tootie? You look as if you need
it.’

I thanked her very much, but declined. I couldn’t have gone back into a lecture room reeking of brandy.

That night, I gave Jimmy my tale of woe, and he was deeply concerned. ‘Was the boy hurt?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Was his bike OK?’

Ah well! I hadn’t given one thought to the poor boy, but I was almost sure that he wasn’t there when I came to my senses. He must have cycled off. I hope so.

Next day was our very first day of teaching practice, our assignment was every Friday for ten weeks, if I remember correctly . . . perhaps eight. Another girl and I had to go to the Girls’
High School, now Harlaw Academy with boys as well as girls. Aileen was scheduled for Primary Fives, and I was down for Primary Ones. I discovered this to be the worst age group for anyone in my
delicate condition. I was bruised right down my back, and I ached – really ached – all over, and the little ones couldn’t speak to me without grabbing my hand or pulling at some
other part of my body.

It was agony, and I had to put up with it for the whole day. I kept hoping that the teacher would let me go home, she must have seen how shaken I was, but she didn’t. Worse still, it was
January, snowing quite badly and freezing cold, but students were not allowed in the staff room. Aileen and I had to monitor the little ones at playtime, and then rush in to have a cup of coffee
when the teachers went back to their own rooms.

We had to go out at lunchtime, so we took the bus back to the College to have something to eat. All the girls commented on how ill I looked and advised me to go home, but I was afraid it would
be a black mark against me if I did, so I went back in the bus with Aileen. It was the very last half hour in the afternoon before I was told to give my lesson, by which time I was almost crawling
on my hands and knees, my back was so sore.

It took me some weeks to recover but, by my last day at the High, when my tutor came to hear me giving a lesson, I was at least feeling something like normal. I had written a story about wild
animals, preparing a strip of paper painted to represent the jungle, with slots to put in a picture of each animal as it came into the tale – stuck to a spill to steady it – all quite
technical. I had given a lot of thought to the story, and to the names for the beasts. Some were easy – Leo the lion, Sammy the snake, Mickey the monkey, and so on, but I just couldn’t
think what to call the hippopotamus. Keeping to my idea of the name beginning with the same letter, I eventually plumped for Hilda, the hippo.

Miss D. seemed satisfied with what I did, and how the little girls reacted to me, although it was difficult to judge what she thought, but I went home quite pleased with my first attempt at
teaching on trial.

On the Monday, however, back in college, I was somewhat apprehensive when Miss D. gave us her actual opinion of our efforts – the dreaded criticism. She didn’t hold back, praising
some and slating some, and I hoped that she wouldn’t take too long to put me out of my misery. She was actually taking us in the order of her visits, so I was last. She looked at me
balefully, and I wondered what I had done wrong.

‘I didn’t care much for your choice of names, Doris,’ she said – she was the only one of all the lecturers and students to use my Christian name – the words
dripping with . . . antagonism?

I couldn’t understand, and must have shown my bewilderment, for she went on, ‘Why did you call your hippopotamus Hilda?’

‘I thought it sounded right,’ I ventured. ‘Hilda, the hippo.’

‘And you honestly didn’t know that my name is Hilda?’

I’m sure my chin must have dropped, but unfortunately, it suddenly struck me as very funny and I couldn’t help laughing . . . not just ordinary laughter, though. With the release of
the tension at having to wait so long for this devastating report, I was almost hysterical – knowing it was the wrong thing to do, but powerless to stop.

It dawned on me that the others were sitting silently, waiting, I suppose, for an explosion, but wonder of wonders, Miss D.’s mouth was lifting in a smile. Not a very big smile, but at
least it was no longer down at the edges.

On another teaching practice, I had two ‘crits’ in the same day. First thing in the morning, the English lecturer came to Victoria Road School to see how I was
progressing with my Primary Seven class, and last thing in the afternoon, the Physical Education teacher was coming to watch me taking them for gym.

I had heard that the children knew exactly what was going on in these situations, that the student was on trial, and they generally came out on her (or his) side, but I might not have believed
this if I hadn’t experienced it myself. My first ‘crit’ went off quite well, the kids were like little angels, striving to answer the questions I asked, but because I still had
the gym lesson to take, I was a bundle of nerves for the rest of the forenoon. This did not escape one girl.

‘Dinna worry, Mrs Davidson,’ she whispered as she went out at lunchtime. ‘You’ll be fine.’

I wasn’t fine, though. My stomach was churning, I’d a touch of diarrhoea and I wished I could go home. The PE tutor came into the gym at three, shook my hand and then sat down beside
a girl who had some problem with her back and couldn’t participate. I had planned my lesson carefully; I can’t recall anything now except the
faux pas
I made. I had split them
into groups and one group had to take a rubber mat out of the cupboard for what they had to do. I could see that they were struggling to get one out of the jumbled pile in the confined space, so I
went to help them. Unfortunately, I accidentally stood on the corner of a mat as the two big boys gave it a tug. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I had fallen to the floor gracefully, but I
staggered a few times with my arms flailing, trying to keep my feet and then collapsed in an ungainly heap.

I was afraid to look at the tutor, and she said nothing as she went to talk to the headmaster later (presumably giving him a laughing account of the stupid mature student he had been harbouring)
but when we went back to the classroom, the girl who had also been watching sidled up to me. ‘You ken the time you fell? Well, that woman wrote something doon in her book. I couldna see what
it was, but will you get a row for it?’

My sense of humour came to my aid. ‘Likely,’ I giggled, ‘but I think everything else went smoothly enough.’

‘Aye, but if you’d left the loons to tak’ the mat oot theirsel’s, you wouldna of fell, would of you?’

And that was exactly what the tutor said back at college, in better English, and I got a long lecture on letting the children do things for themselves. She had nothing else derogatory to say
about me, however, and I was given a ‘C’.

Then came another kind of test, teaching in pairs, although I don’t know what this was meant to prove. Anyway, Lillias and I were placed together in one of the only two
Roman Catholic primary schools in Aberdeen. We were told not to go in until half past nine because they had a religious service for the first half-hour. That suited us very well, and we were even
more pleased when we saw the class we would be having. We were to be two weeks there alongside the teacher, and two weeks without her, and there were only – would you believe – nine
children. Three each for the first two weeks. Not only that, we also got off early in the afternoons, because they had another, shorter, service before they went home.

A little diversion here. Around this time, I decided that I’d like to learn to drive, after all. (You may recall my aborted attempt almost twenty years earlier, when I
worked in the garage.) I may say here, categorically, that it’s not a good idea to ask your husband to give you driving lessons.

Jimmy had taught my sister to drive, and one day, when he’d jumped down my throat several times for doing stupid things, I said, ‘Bertha always said you were really patient with her,
so why are you raving at me?’

He heaved a deep sigh. ‘She learned in her own car. You’re playing merry hell with mine, that’s the difference.’

On another occasion, I was driving down a fairly long hill and getting more and more annoyed at the things he was saying, so I eventually slammed on the brakes, shouted, ‘Drive the bloody
car yourself, then,’ and jumped out.

He talked me back in, of course, but I’d had enough. I didn’t have far to look for professional tuition. Lillias’s father ran a driving school. He was the best person I could
have chosen; no mealy-mouthed obeisance, just outright, honest criticism. And I do mean criticism.

I was so nervous that he gave me a slap on the leg one day. Another time, when I asked if he had anybody else as nervous as I was, he snapped, ‘There’s nobody else in this world as
nervous as you.’ But his eyes were twinkling and I knew he didn’t mean it. Um . . . I think. I was more nervous than ever when he told me to apply for my test, and wonder of wonders, I
passed first time.

I had another Primary One class at one point – at Drumgarth School, now no longer. Most of the children were very well behaved, but there was one little monster . . . to
put it mildly. He swore (at five years old), he refused to do any work, he wouldn’t sit down when he was told and he wouldn’t stop shouting if he felt like it, his voice deep and
penetrating. This was fairly early in my student days and I was petrified of being left alone with him, even for the half-hour each day I was allowed. At those times, the teacher herself took him
with her, to the staffroom or wherever she went. I will call this boy John Wallace, a beautiful, blue-eyed boy with fair curly hair, looking like an angel but actually the devil incarnate. Keep him
in mind; he features drastically in my life in a few years.

We had to take a turn at teaching in a rural school, and although I was by then licensed to drive, I wasn’t looking forward to an early start in the morning. I could be
sent anywhere in Aberdeenshire. As it happened, I had to go to Kingswells School, a matter of ten minutes on the bus (door to door) from where we now lived. We had moved to Hazlehead in 1966, but
I’ll get round to that in the next chapter.

Rural schools often had two age groups in the same class, and I was delegated to Primaries one and two, to start in the first week of 1967. On Hogmanay, I couldn’t breathe properly because
of some obstruction in my nose and when the doctor examined me on the second of January, he said I had polyps that would have to be removed. But I would have to wait some time for the
operation.

I went to Kingswells, therefore, speaking as if I had a bad head cold. ‘I’b sorry, girls ad boys, but there is subthig wrog with by dose.’ That was what I said to them, and
they were all suitably impressed. I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d been in a school in town, but these dear lambs looked after me like nursemaids.

I think it was into May before I had the operation – a horrible messy business that left me feeling constantly dizzy. Our graduation was in June, and I was nothing like recovered. Then
came the day we were interviewed for teaching posts. I hadn’t been able to wash my hair for weeks, or let anyone wash it for me, so on my way to the Education Offices in Broad Street, I went
into Esslemont and MacIntosh (Aberdeen’s most prestigious store, and with a bus stop at its entrance) and bought a hat. It cost over £1 – a lot for me then – and I
don’t think I ever wore it again.

We were informed by letter which schools would be expecting us at the end of the holidays, and the girls of 3K Section were to be scattered all over Britain, apart from Morag,
who was being sent on VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) to Timbuktu, more a pie-in-the-sky than a real place to most of us. A few years later she was sent to Papua New Guinea, where she met her
future husband, an Australian. Catherine, fond of sports, was delighted to be sent to Coylumbridge, with Aviemore a kick-in-the-behind away, where she could ski to her heart’s content. She is
now in Glasgow teaching English as a second language.

Lillias, my constant companion, was married soon after we graduated. Her husband taught at the London School of Economics, so they lived in the capital for many years, until Ted was given the
honour of a chair at Cardiff University. We see them at least once every year, as I’ve mentioned before. Of the others, I’m not too sure where they are. One, who must have tired of
teaching, or perhaps didn’t agree with the way the Government was changing education (ruining it?), left to train as a chiropodist, and still works in Aberdeen as far as I know. Another is
now a Head Teacher, most probably thinking of retiring now, if she has not already done so.