Shoes Were For Sunday (3 page)

As my mother later said, I was Mrs McCorbie’s body and soul for that sixpence. She used to knock on the ceiling when she wanted me, and even if I were raising the teacup to my lips I’d lay it down untasted when I heard the knock, and I would be at her door in a flash, ready to run the forgotten errand. Not that Mrs McCorbie wanted such instant obedience, but I had a high sense of responsibility towards my employer, and, with the wisdom of the poor, I knew what that sixpence meant to her.

We didn’t speak very much to each other, I remember. Poor, over-worked people have little leisure for mere conversation, but I think she liked me coming to her door each day to see if I were wanted, and occasionally I was allowed to rummage through the drawers and play with the empty cotton reels, and to build lovely little houses with them. There was a silent companionship between us, and, of course, for me she had the added fascination of being ‘a slave’, for I never forgot my mother’s description.

She saw less and less of her children. They’d come home from work, swallow their food, and be off again. One very hot summer night, when I was about ten, the youngest daughter came running into the back court where we were playing. She was white to the lips and trembling. ‘My mother is dead,’ she said. My heart gave a terrible lurch, for I had never met death until this time. I looked at the soft skies, and then at the bright eyes of my playmates and couldn’t believe it wasn’t some awful nightmare. The bigger girls crowded round me, for they knew our family were on intimate terms with Mrs McCorbie, but I crept away, dazed and shaken by the shock. I hadn’t the usual childish sense of importance because I was close to the central figure in this drama – I felt sick and wanted to go home.

I stole quietly past Mrs McCorbie’s door, and it was terrible not to hear the whirr of the machine when it was still daylight, for she always worked until the last
light faded from the sky. Now there was silence. They sent for my mother, and when she went down she found Mrs McCorbie slumped over her machine, her hands still holding shirt and collar, ready to join them under the needle. The pins had fallen from her hair, and it hung, long and black, to her knees and my mother told me later that she looked like some Highland heroine from a painting, with her pale face and flowing magnificent hair.

Nobody knew where to find the two older children. In their careless fashion they hadn’t bothered to tell anyone where they were going. This seemed terrible to us, for, like most of the children of the tenements, we were never allowed out of the house without our mothers knowing exactly where we could be found. We were also left in no doubt as to the hour we were expected to be home.

But the McCorbie children came and went as they pleased. I wondered how long it had been since they had even noticed the little figure bent so uncomplainingly over the machine. I knew I was going to miss her much more than they would. She had been my first employer. Never again would I see the dark eyes approving my speed as I returned, panting, with a little bit of shopping. Never again experience the warm glow of the dignity of service, as she pressed the silver sixpence into my hand for a week’s work well done.

I knew a stab of agony as I anticipated the quiet emptiness which would lie behind the McCorbie door
from now on, as I passed it on my way up and downstairs. No more knocks on the ceiling for my services. And, worst of all, no more wakening to the firelight and the jingle of keys against the gentle murmur of a Highland voice mingling with Grannie’s.

Like children the world over, we followed an unwritten pattern for our games. One minute we’d be playing peever, which was our name for hop-scotch, and the greatest thing in the world then was to hop skilfully from bed to bed without touching the chalked line, sending the marble disc or peever into the next bed with poised toe; and then, for no apparent reason, we were all hunting out our girds. The gird or hoop season was starting and we didn’t want to miss a minute. I can still see my mother’s wrath as her snowy bedspread was pushed aside, while we three children groped under the bed for our girds and cleeks. The cleeks were the metal batons we used to control the gird’s movements. The pastime was one usually reserved for boys, but as a special concession to my enthusiasm and my flying limbs, I was allowed to join the runners.

There were usually about six of us setting off at one time. An assortment of metal circles leaned against our legs as we waited for the last one to arrive, and we dirled negligently with the cleeks as we listened to the leader outlining the course for that night.

‘Noo, it’s roon’ the buildin’ the night first of all. Then
ower the park, doon past the power station, alang the canal bank, an’ back by the road.’

‘Right.’

With wild skirls and leapings we were off, girds spinning smoothly in front, eyes watchful for a break in the rhythm, cleek ready to administer sharp encouragement at the exact moment of metal wobbling, feet trotting in unbroken pattern as we raced along.

There were tricky moments with bumpy cobblestones, but we experts knew just when to apply the cleek to keep all steady and sweetly running. The menace of tramlines at a complex crossing would have to be met, and cleek, eyes, feet and brain worked at lightning speed to manoeuvre the gird so that one would not fall behind the crowd.

The gird was a magic carpet carrying us into odd and sometimes forbidden corners of the town, and there was an unholy joy in speeding along the canal banks and over the bridges down into the heart of the city, where tolerant policemen waved us through the busy crossings. We must have run miles on these races, and the exercise and caller air filled us with wild exhilaration.

I suppose traffic must have been lighter, for it’s a fact that none of us met calamity on our wild outings, and the worst that befell any of us was a broken gird. When this happened the race was abandoned, and we all dawdled back together, to keep the unfortunate owner company, but we didn’t really mind this, for a
broken gird entailed a visit to the smiddy, and this was a never-palling thrill.

As we drew near the smiddy, we would break into a trot, clattering up the hill, swinging through the hole in the fence which took us slithering down the brae right to the smiddy door, there to cluster in an excited circle watching big Sanny pounding a live, glowing shoe into shape.

He made those horseshoes for stock-piling, but sometimes there would be a horse waiting to be shod, and we stood tense with admiration of Sanny’s skill and daring as he hammered and pared, ignoring the wild gleam in the horse’s eye as he drove the shoe home.

And then it would be our turn. With one mighty arm Sanny worked the bellows which transformed the smouldering glow of the furnace into a roaring inferno. The gird would be thrust in, heated, and laid on the anvil, and with a few tremendous smacks of the hammer which sent the sparks flying, the fracture was mended.

A quick plunge of the red-hot metal into a bucket of water, a hiss and a cloud of steam, and the job was finished. A penny changed hands, and surely better entertainment was never provided for such a trifling sum.

Trace-horses were a familiar sight in my childhood, and one of the great dramas of our streets in winter-time was when one of those huge creatures slithered on the icy cobbles and went crashing to the ground. A
silent crowd would gather round the still form as it lay inert, and I used to be stirred by the power that flowed from their watchfulness, heads bent forward, intent, willing the passive beast to rise.

A child’s voice would query wonderingly, ‘How can it no get up?’, to be answered in deeper tones, ‘It’s feart it slips again, son. It makes them awfu’ nervous once they slide an’ clatter doon wi’ the frost.’

The carter, cap pushed back to allow free movement for a perplexed scratch, would watch his charge anxiously. ‘Come on, Jock,’ he would cluck encouragingly. ‘Come on noo, gi’es a good try. Up ye come.’

The beast would gather itself for a tremendous effort, and suddenly, every muscle springing to violent activity, eyes rolling and flashing wildly, it would rear in thunderous eruption, sending sparks flying as its hooves struck the cobbles, and the crowd would draw convulsively back in quick alarm in case it should fall among them.

With a slither and a crash it would fall down again in failure, quivering and quiet once more, only the fearful wildness in the eyes betraying the helpless fear that it was trapped and would never rise again.

‘Nothing else fur it, mate,’ somebody would shout, ‘you’ll have to loosen it oot o’ the shafts.’

The carter had tried to avoid this labour, but he recognized the inevitable, and with elaborate ritual and willing hands to assist, every strap and buckle would be loosened till the animal lay free, only himself to raise now, and no shackling cart to impede his efforts.

A few men would place themselves at strategic points to lend a hand to steady the animal when at the next or the next attempt it had gained its feet, and eager arms thrust forward to keep the beast erect and balanced, while they avoided the danger of plunging head and flying feet.

A cheer would rise from the rest of us as the drama drew to a close, and the huge trembling creature was harnessed to his cart once more.

The men would stroll off, pleased and satisfied at having helped at an event which needed their manhood and their strength, and we children would dash up to the high road to watch the horse clattering away into the distance, past Sanny’s smiddy, away into the town.

The high road not only provided a marvellous grandstand view of everything going on underneath on the main thoroughfare, it was also our adventure playground. It provided games and contests of skill quite different from those to be found in the back courts, and we loved it.

On summer evenings as it grew cooler and we became tired of the joys of taking bottles of water and jeely pieces up to the public park, or satiated with the thrills of hunting for ‘baggies’ which disappointingly died almost as soon as they’d been fished from the pond, somebody would say, ‘Whit aboot the high road?’ We actually said ‘hirode’, for we didn’t know it was two words and that it meant a road higher than the main road.

In swift consent we’d wheel in that direction, like
migratory birds, each determined to be there first. The one to reach and touch the end pole first was leader for the rest of the evening’s playtime. Somehow it was always evening when we thought of pole slides. The leader, having established his right, was obeyed without question. His was the heady power which decided which poles we’d patronize, or whether we would do any sliding at all. We happily fell in with his most fantastic plans, made just as the spirit moved him.

The tall poles were spaced at regular intervals along the main road, and actually carried the overhead wires for the tramcar trolleys, but their tops towered challengingly near to the railings which topped the high wall behind them. These railings were really a safety barrier on the outside perimeter of the high road pavement to protect the heedless from toppling over into the street below. We thought they’d been placed there entirely for our delight, and to us they were the narrow entrance to our adventurous slides on the poles.

This road on such a high level excited us, and we would first of all peep down at the main road, shuddering with pleasurable fear. ‘Whit a terrible depth up!’ somebody would breathe, and we felt brave as any mountaineer scaling impossible heights. Then, one at a time, the biggest going first to give the smaller ones courage, we’d squeeze our bodies through the narrow railings, reach out, clasp the narrow standard, and with an ecstatic rush slide down to the pavement so far below. A moment’s pause to recover from the exhilar
ation of that breathless slide, then we’d tear round the foot of the hill, and back to the railings again, and so the game went on till bedtime. Sometimes a plump little tummy would stick for a second on its way through. ‘Oh, gi’es a shove, ah’m
stuck
!’, and the victim’s eyes popped with terror. With a mighty shove from the rest of us queuing up behind, he would be released, and the following slide was all the sweeter for the risk that had been involved.

The first two poles were the only ones the younger children ventured to use, because as the gradient rose, the slide to the ground became longer. But when we were very small it was a thrilling occasion when some of the bigger boys joined us. We knew they’d only come to show off, but it was exciting all the same, and we rushed after them as though they were Pied Pipers. They’d swagger past our poles until they reached the very highest, which stood right at the crest of the road. With narrowed eyes they surveyed the hazards and then, because they were too large to squeeze through the railings, actually swung themselves over the top, paused for a second on the supporting stonework, launched themselves at the pole, and skimmed swiftly to the pavement. Timidly we would lean forward, noses pressed to the railings, and follow their rapid progress to the ground. How sickeningly far away it seemed.

They jeered at us, the bigger boys, but when one of our band looked as if he would attempt this death-defying slide there and then, a large hand would
hold him back. ‘Naw naw, son, look, your erms have to be as long as mine or you’d never be able to grab the pole when you jumped.’ And he would hold out an arm and gravely measure the childish arm against it, and prove to us all that bravery wasn’t enough. It seemed the wildest optimism to think
we
would ever be big enough or daring enough to attempt such hazardous heights, and with an envious sigh we’d return to our little poles until grannies and mothers called us all in for the night.

On winter days the best slides were on the pavement of the high road. Somehow the ice was more slippery there, and, of course, the slope steep enough to satisfy the most speed-crazed heart. Arms outstretched to balance us, we’d skim along the silvery surface, cheeks and eyes glowing with joy, feeling we were almost flying. Our feet polished this strip of pavement to lethal slipperiness as far as the adults were concerned, and many a ‘currant bun’, which was our name for a crash, was suffered by the men next morning on their way to work, or the women with their shopping bags. I can’t recall that any bones were broken, but I can remember the roars of fury: ‘These weans and their damt slides – I’ll belt the next yin I catch making slides on the pavement.’ I could never understand their resentment. Surely they knew the pavement had just the right smoothness for slides, and anyway we wouldn’t have minded them having a wee shot on our slide even though they hadn’t helped to make it.