Shoes Were For Sunday (10 page)

As I was friendly with one of the daughters in this exciting household, I used to pay occasional visits there, and I must have embarrassed the lodger terribly, sitting staring at him with unwinking eye, noting every detail of his appearance, from his thick thatch of red hair to his heavy-soled tackety boots, careful to overlook nothing in the personality of this strange being, the first lodger I had ever seen.

The common factor to such large households was their quietness. This amazed me. I was too young to realize that where three children could be naturally exuberant, twelve or fourteen just had to be quiet and restrained or anarchy would have prevailed. And it was easy to see how fond they all were of each other. In the house where there were fourteen, the girl I was friendly
with told me in all seriousness that when the oldest son was married they felt the house was empty. They missed him so much, they could hardly bear it. I’d have thought they would have been grateful for a little extra breathing space, but their minds didn’t run that way.

With these examples of ingenuity all round us we didn’t even stop to think twice where the wedding celebrations would be held when my mother’s youngest sister got married. We’d have them in our house, of course, in the evening, after a five o’clock wedding so that all the men could be present. There was no question of anybody asking time off work for anything so frivolous as a wedding, so the festive board would have to wait till they’d finished their day’s work and changed out of their dungarees into their Sunday dark suits. My mother and her sister shared the costs, and of course it could all be supplied on credit on our Cooperative book, and the dividend on such a huge expense would be as good as winning a sweepstake. We knew about such things for my mother shared a sixpenny ticket with a workmate on Derby Day, and she had once won twenty-five shillings – a fortune.

Although my mother had thrown up her hands in amazement at the wedding which had been held in the close, with its slit of a boxroom for the children, she wasn’t in the least daunted by the thought of having to arrange for all the eating, drinking and entertaining to take place in our one good room. Or of only having one wee kitchen for the coats, and the washing up and where
Grannie and I would be sleeping. Or that the toilet arrangements were one flight of stairs down, and we were adding at least two dozen to the two families already sharing this amenity. She took such difficulties in her stride, and we all plunged into our various tasks with a will.

Everything that could be stowed out of sight was pushed under beds, or crammed into wardrobes and chests of drawers, and I may say that we had a fine time afterwards trying to find clothes for bed that night and for school next morning.

About four o’clock in the afternoon, long trestle tables arrived and were set up, one along each side wall and one across the oriel window, and long benches were ranged behind each table to give seating accommodation to the greatest number that could be squeezed into the room. We had burst the bank and were having outside caterers, and we children rushed in and out among the workmen’s feet, delirious with joy at the transformation scene which turned our one and only parlour into a little hall before our very eyes.

Long boards filled with crockery and glasses were brought in, and the places set on snowy white tablecloths, also supplied by the caterer. We’d never seen such vast pieces of linen, and shuddered with horror at the thought of tea being spilled on such dazzling cloths, for we couldn’t imagine how long it must take to wash and dry cloths of that size, or how they could ever be ironed to such a state of smooth perfection. As we stared, fervently praying we wouldn’t be the ones to
disgrace ourselves with such a mishap, the next contingent were bustling in, carrying boards filled with plates of sliced bread, cakes and biscuits. These were ranged along the tables, and bottles of sauce and pickles placed at strategic intervals and, after a long critical survey to make sure nothing had been overlooked, vases of flowers were moved from the sideboard and laid exactly in the centre of each table.

Next came the drinks, which were left in a corner of the kitchen, ready to be opened at the appropriate moment.

As we lived two flights of stairs from the street, you can imagine the amount of tramping up and down that took place during this non-stop performance, but everybody loved a wedding and there wasn’t a word of complaint from neighbours or workmen.

By five o’clock it was pandemonium, with my mother trying to get the three of us children dressed, not forgetting helping Grannie into her black silk blouse with the cameo brooch at the collar, and endeavouring to shake the creases out of her own lilac crêpe, which had been knocked off the hook at the back of the door three times by the men as they pushed past delivering another load of food.

We didn’t go to the ceremony, as my mother was terrified to leave the house in case something calamitous would happen, so we had a little extra time for dressing. But the last button was barely done up when bride and groom were with us, and guests pouring in behind
them, shrugging out of coats and hats, and making their way to the room where the laden tables glittered and gleamed under the gas chandelier which was my mother’s pride and joy.

There was much praise for the beauty of the arrangements, and a good deal of jostling and squeezing as people wriggled into their places. Then, with perfect timing, the waitresses arrived to serve the meal. Ahead of them four men strode in, bearing boards of steak pies and vegetables. We children yelled with delight. Never had we seen so many pies all at once, never such gigantic mounds of snowy mashed potatoes, never such tureens of peas, never such vast bowls of mashed swedes.

There was some slight embarrassment in having strange waitresses standing over us as we ate, but it was a bitterly cold night and we quickly forgot them as we tucked into our delicious meal, and soon toasts were being drunk to great bursts of laughter, much of which was beyond the children, and then the tables were dismantled and the floor cleared for singing, games and dancing.

The vocalists needed a bit of coaxing before they’d agree to sing us a favourite song, and my Uncle Johnnie was furious because his wife insisted on singing soulfully ‘The March of the Cameron Men’. He felt she was parading her pride in him too openly. This was because he had been a Cameron Highlander in the war!

Grannie sang, in imitation of Victorian music-hall
ballad, ‘Be kind to auld Grannie, for noo she is frail, like a time-shattered tree bending low in the Gale’, and I wept copiously because I thought the words were so touching and so beautiful. Somebody else sang ‘O’ a’ the airts the wind can blaw’, and my mother wept, and we all had a lovely time.

We played forfeits, and bee baw babbity and games involving wee bits of paper and pencil. And then we had an eightsome reel, and quadrilles, and there wasn’t a cheep of protest from the family living underneath.

The door of our house was wide open most of the evening, and anybody who felt like it was welcome to come in and see the bride and toast her health. The fun went on till midnight, and when at last they all departed, our faces were flushed with triumph and happiness, for we had had a wonderful wedding. ‘A great celebration, Jeannie,’ they said to my mother as they left. ‘A splendid repast and a grand wedding.’

Looking back, I realized all this must have involved an enormous amount of work for my mother, and it must have taken days to get cleared up in spite of help from caterers. But they were unsophisticated times, and a passionate belief in our ability to put on a show helped to make the work light. And for many moons afterwards, whenever anyone mentioned any grand occasion, I always countered with ‘Just like my auntie’s wedding, when we had real waitresses in our house and thousands of steak pies’.

When I was a wee girl if you said that something looked ‘hand-made’ it was the greatest insult you could hurl at the disparaged article. To be exactly the same as everyone else was the look that was coveted, and great was the anguish suffered by children whose mothers had to make do and mend from anything which came to hand.

Luckily I didn’t mind a bit, which was just as well, for I don’t think my mother was ever able to afford a single garment which the school required. Apart from my boots, which, of course, had to be bought because none of us had figured out how to make them from anything lying around the house, practically everything was hand-made, and mostly out of things first worn by my mother or somebody else. The endless hours and patience which must have gone into fashioning my garments weren’t met with a scowl by me, for I was well aware of the tightness of the family budget.

Grannie knitted my long black stockings, and I took as much pride as she did in the ‘intakes’ at the back, which made the shape and could truly be described as ‘fully-fashioned’. How well they clung to my ankles, and rose long and snug right to the tops of my legs, where they met the buttons on my Liberty bodice.

When her tweed skirt was beyond hope for her own use, it was cunningly fashioned into a little pleated skirt for me, and we both thought I was elegance itself when this was topped with an exactly matching woollen jumper Grannie knitted. This wool we got from somebody who worked in a wool warehouse, and it was going practically free because it had become entangled, and the firm couldn’t waste time rewinding it. A great bargain this. In fact I wore this particular jumper for years, with Grannie cleverly changing the collar each winter. One year it sported a grey angora collar, the next a red and white striped one, and latterly a white rabbit’s wool one. I was elated when my school-teacher said in its final winter, ‘Another new jumper from your grannie’s clever needles?’, and I was able to say demurely, but proudly, ‘No, miss, just a new collar.’ And I never forgot that lesson, that it is amazingly easy to ring the changes on an old garment by a new eye-catching accessory.

We saw nothing frumpty in wearing ‘winter combs’. They were cosy and comforting in wintry weather, both indoors and out, for in spite of the coal fire in the range, it could be cold in the tenements. Grannie was able to knit us lovely cosy combs in pale grey or pale pink, buying the wool in bulk through that same good fairy in the wool warehouse. I don’t think I ever saw Grannie without her steel needles flashing in her lap, summer or winter, for it was a constant task keeping us all clothed all the year round.

She was an expert knitter, and I remember my mother being fascinated by a little waistcoat she saw in a pattern book, and beginning to knit this in brown and mustard shades. Grannie took one look at the size and said, ‘That will fit oor Molly when it’s feenished, but never you, it’s far ower wee.’ My mother was indignant for she had implicit faith that a book must be far more accurate than Grannie’s invented patterns. Doggedly she followed the instructions, pressed out the finished garment and sewed it together. We all looked at each other, and my mother walked out of the kitchen without a word. I felt so sorry that it had turned out this way after all her hard work, for she wasn’t a natural knitter like Grannie, but I must say that sporty little waistcoat kept my back snug and warm for a good few winters, and in the end my mother rejoiced that at least she had made a first-class job of this tiny garment. ‘You’d think it had been bought in a shop,’ she said proudly. ‘You’d never think it had been hand-made.’

My summer ginghams were devised from about a yard of material at elevenpence ha’penny or one shilling and sixpence, and, of course, not a penny was spent on a pattern. My mother just copied whatever style took her fancy. Boys’ clothes had to be bought, you see, for the first attempt to make a pair of trousers was so disastrous that a second was never even contemplated. The boys were far more conventional than I was, and utterly refused to be dressed differently from their fellows. But with a girl it was different – for I didn’t mind
my slightly unusual clothes. Mind you, dresses were easy, and with this girl it was certainly different, I’d been reading quite a lot about a little French girl who came to stay in Scotland, and who looked completely different from everyone else and went sobbing to bed each night because of this; but in the end she triumphed, because a rich lady came and instantly picked out this little oddity because she was elegant and
chic
, and not ordinary like the others, and she took her on a splendid holiday to the seaside. This story reinforced Grannie’s teaching that it didn’t matter if one looked different from other people, and in fact at times could be a positive advantage. Alas, no rich lady picked me out from the crowd, but the upstairs neighbours did take me with them when they went to the sea in the summer, after I’d had flu, and that was almost as good.

When the time came for me to move to the higher school we were at our wits’ end, for now it was demanded that I wear a gym tunic with a blouse underneath. Where on earth could we find the money for a gym tunic? Even the coarsest serge was beyond my mother’s pocket. She looked over her meagre wardrobe. She had a fine navy gaberdine jacket and skirt, and decided she’d sacrifice the skirt for me. This time I was in a panic, for I’d been told it
had
to be serge. How could gaberdine look like serge? It was much finer, and it was a slightly lighter shade of navy, and this time I just had to be the same as the rest of the class. It was a uniform. I was certain I wouldn’t be allowed to study
with the rest of the class, and would be condemned to the junior school for ever.

My mother ignored my anguished cries and sewed on. When I saw the finished result I sat down and wept. Not only was it a light navy, not only gaberdine, but with the curve of the skirt she hadn’t been able to make a square yoke; and the pleats were hung on to a curved yoke, the square corners rounded instead of sharp. Added to this, my mother had decided the best value in blouses was Tussore silk, not white cotton. Not only was it cheap, but it wouldn’t show the dirt, an important consideration. I crept to school that first day, hardly daring to take off my coat. To my amazement, half the girls in the new class had no gym tunics at all. The teacher cast an inquiring eye over us, and then asked me to come out to the front. My moment of shame was upon me. I could hardly see for threatening tears, and my face was red as a beetroot. My very ears were tingling. And through my confusion I heard her say, ‘Now that’s the sort of neat appearance I would like all of you to achieve. You can have a choice of blouse, so long as the colours are pale, but you can see what a neat uniform appearance you will present when you’re all dressed like this.’ I went back to my seat in a dream. She hadn’t minded at all about the gaberdine – or the curved yoke – or the Tussore silk blouse. My mother was delighted when I told her that I’d been brought out in front of the whole class to let everybody see the homemade gym tunic, which was an example of what the
others should attempt. ‘Aye,’ she said happily, ‘I’ll bet she never realized it was home-made.’