Shoes Were For Sunday (9 page)

But och I was glad that our grannie only had bronchitis when she had to have the doctor, for there was another old lady in the tenements who was ‘dotted’ as we called the mentally ill, and the doctor had to prescribe a different sort of bottle to keep her safe and quiet.

She was very old – about eighty, Grannie said – with snow-white hair, a pink wrinkled skin, light blue eyes with an expression of bewildered innocence which made her look like an elderly baby, and a high sing-song
voice. She was the mother of neighbours who used to live downstairs in our tenement, and Grannie had known her in her saner days. So when the family moved away, and nobody in the new tenement could be bothered with her, it was to our house she found her way almost daily.

I was about eleven years old at the time, and the number of times I had to take Grannie Mackay all the way back to her house were beyond counting. No question of riding on a tramcar or a bus either, for there was no money for such extras. Walk we must and walk we did.

How she found her way to our house without coming to grief in the heavy traffic was a mystery. When I would come home from school I would whisper to my grannie, ‘Is she here?’, and my heart would sink into a gloom of fear at the reply, ‘Don’t stand there on the mat – of course she’s here, and she’s lookin’ furrit to seeing you.’

One of Grannie Mackay’s more frightening habits was her inconsistency in the matter of sex. ‘Here’s Molly to see you,’ my grannie would call out cheerfully. Old Mrs Mackay would fix me with a surprised blue eye, as though I didn’t live in our house. ‘Oh she’s a fine boy, a fine boy,’ she’d chant. ‘I’m
not
a boy,’ I’d mutter furiously, but this tactlessness was silenced by a quenching look from my grannie. ‘Aye,’ the chant would continue, ‘a fine boy she is, a lovely boy she is, growing every day.’

My back would be pressed against the dresser to get as far away from the old lady as possible – her witlessness frightened me, but my grannie would have none
of this timidity. ‘Mrs Mackay wants you to comb her hair,’ she’d say briskly. This was the thing I feared most. ‘Oh, Grannie,’ I’d whisper tearfully, ‘I don’t like combing her hair. It’s cold, and it feels wet and her head’s all pink.’

Grannie dismissed my distaste with ‘What does it matter about
your
comfort? Doesn’t Mrs Mackay need her hair combed? It’s little enough she has to please her. She likes you to comb her hair, and at her age her feelings are far more important than yours.’ So I would climb on to the back of the big chair and with trembling fingers undo the pins and quietly brush and comb the lank white hair. Old Mrs Mackay kept up a dreamy chant as I brushed, ‘Och there is lovely, it is. Och she’s a fine boy at the hairdressing. A fine boy.’ This would irritate me so much I’d want to give the old head a smart tap with the brush, fear or no fear, but my grannie’s watchfulness prevented any such tantrums. ‘What does it matter whether she thinks you’re a boy or not,’ Grannie would say afterwards, ‘you
ken
you’re a lassie, and calling you a boy isn’t going to turn you into one!’

At last the moment would arrive when Grannie would say ‘Now, Mrs Mackay, your daughter will be wondering where you are, and your tea will be ready. Molly will take you home.’

With great ceremony she would don her grey shawl, place her black ‘mutch’ over her carefully combed hair, and rise panting and grunting to her feet. Obeying a nod from Grannie, I’d draw old Mrs Mackay’s arm
through mine, and lead her slowly – oh, how slowly – out of the house, down the stairs, into the street and along the road through the traffic to her daughter’s house. As often as not, I’d hardly be home again when she was back almost at my heels, having completely forgotten she’d just left us. Back we’d go again, and I’d whisper to her relatives that they must try to keep her in, because I’d homework to do and I couldn’t be running back and forward all night. My grannie would have been furious had she heard me, but I felt I
had
to make a stand somewhere.

But if the clouded mind of the ‘dotted’ frightened me, the mere whisper of ‘fever’, that infant scourge, sent our mothers sick with dread. With twelve families to a close, infection could spread like wildfire, and the sight of the fever van struck a chill into our hearts. But curiosity among us children was always stronger than fear and we would gather on the pavement to catch a glimpse of a swathed figure on its way through the close to the ambulance, and shudder with relief that it wasn’t us on the stretcher. Awed as we children were by the sight of our playmate magically transformed to a terrifying bundle, borne by two solemn ambulance-men, we realized that while we were lively and healthy we might as well enjoy ourselves, and give a bit of help at the same time. So we organized back-court concerts to raise money to buy presents for the hospital cases.

As soon as the ambulance had disappeared we’d race through the close to the back court and decide on our
entertainment. We’d maybe arrange to do an imitation of the pantomime we’d seen from the gallery during the winter, or a cowboys and Indians episode from the latest film, and we had to decide whether our costumes would be made from crinkled paper or cast-offs begged from our mothers. We’d divide out the roles to be played, and we sewed and pinned and rehearsed for days, practically in a fever ourselves as we got everything ready for the performance. We never repeated a show. It had to be a full-scale new production for each victim, and we lived every minute of it.

We charged a ha’penny for children and a penny for adults, and the adults sat on the stone edging which ran round the back-court railings. The children sat on the ground or stood, just as they pleased. We generally gave two performances, and our audience usually stayed for both, and were highly critical if they didn’t get an exact repeat performance at the second house, word for word, gesture for gesture. As nothing was written down and everything had been rehearsed on the principle of ‘You say this’ and ‘I’ll say that’, this wasn’t easy, but we pacified them by singing an extra verse of a favourite song if the mood turned too critical.

Although I was always very nervous, I was quite drunk with power when I discovered how easy it was to change the mood of an audience from one of enthusiastic noisy delight at my swash-buckling impersonation of a Principal Boy, to silent pathos at my rendering of ‘Won’t you buy my pretty flowers’. Heady stuff, and I
quite forgot the victim in my enthusiastic production of my all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing extravaganzas.

We usually collected enough in pennies and ha’pennies to be able to offer the fever victim a huge box of chocolates and a bag of fruit, and the shopping expeditions were themselves a source of intense pleasure. We felt like millionaires as we crowded into the sweet-shop and selected, with great care, a box with a sympathetic dog on the lid, and then moved to the fruit-shop next door, where we spent the rest of the money on as many apples and oranges as the kitty would cover. No fanciful things like grapes or melons for us – oranges and apples were our limit and we knew they would be appreciated to the last bite.

Somehow one always assumed it would be somebody else who would be chosen for the victim, and the part of the entertainer would be filled by oneself.

And then, one year when we simply couldn’t afford it to happen, the fever germ struck our house, and it struck me. My aunt was home on a visit from Australia on a specially reduced ticket which involved her travelling back by a certain date. If she went beyond this date an extra twenty pounds had to be paid, an enormous sum in our world, in fact an impossible sum for us to find. She had come home to have her last baby born in Scotland, and was within three weeks of her sailing date when I came in complaining of a sore throat and a throbbing head. I didn’t know what those symptoms meant, but my mother and my grannie did. I caught
the look of horror which passed between them and I was puzzled. They didn’t speak, beyond handing me a glass, pouring in some stuff and telling me to gargle. As I was tucked into bed, I heard Auntie whisper, ‘We ought to send for the doctor.’ My mother shushed her fiercely. ‘We can’t. You’d never be allowed to leave, and you must get that boat. Where could we get twenty pounds.’ ‘But, Jeanie,’ my auntie urged, ‘she should be in hospital.’ Hospital! Ambulances! I was to be the next bundle carried through the awe-struck spectators! I felt tears sting my eyelids at the thought of it, but my mother would have none of it. ‘I can do what’s necessary,’ she said.

Now at that time in our small room-and-kitchen tenement dwelling there were three adults, three children and an infant; an outside toilet had to be shared with two other families, so the risk of spreading infection was terrifying. But my mother faced it all, and took it in her stride. She was used to hardship, and to battling with difficulties, with poverty a powerful spur, and in this crisis she was magnificent.

She had her job in the big engineering works to attend to, but she saw that everything I touched or used was sterilized. She was so dramatic when she explained to my brothers about the dangers of using anything I had eaten from that for months afterwards they refused to drink from a cup if they’d seen it anywhere near my bed during my illness. Towels and face-flannel were kept scrupulously apart from the others, gargling
routines punctiliously observed, light diet adhered to, and as I slept with Grannie we felt it wasn’t very likely she would be infected at her age.

The worst part was trying to keep my school chums from visiting me. We couldn’t and daren’t tell them the real cause of my illness, but we couldn’t risk suspicion and the dreaded ‘sanitary’ inspector descending upon us by refusing everyone admittance. So the one or two special chums who couldn’t be kept out were made to sit at the other end of the kitchen, by the window, and yell their sympathy from there, on the excuse that I was very easily made sneeze, and the cold air they brought in with them sent me off on an attack if they sat too close to me. Strange to say, everybody believed this. We were a trusting community. Even I wasn’t sure that it was fever I had, for the word was never mentioned, until the skin began to peel in strips from my hands. Then I wore little white silk gloves and pretended this was to keep my hands warm when I kept them outside the clothes, which I liked, for if they got cold it made me sneeze again. Once more, because I’d always been full of mad capers and loved dressing up, everybody believed us.

The new baby was kept in the other room, and I never saw her again, except held at a distance at the other end of the kitchen just before she left with Auntie for the boat. Auntie gazed at me compassionately and lovingly, but didn’t dare come closer to say goodbye.

It was a miracle, of course, but nobody on the stair developed even the mildest symptom. I gradually found
my strength, and at last was ready for school again. My absence had been explained as prolonged bronchitis, and as I was always top of the class and an enthusiastic pupil, nobody doubted us. But there was a terrible moment when I went back to school and the teacher looked up from the register as I answered ‘Present, miss’. ‘Oh, hullo. Are you better? Was it fever?’

I stared at her dumbly, the blood rushing to my pale cheeks. ‘How had she guessed? What would I say?’ It was one thing acting a lie, especially when I hadn’t really known it was a lie for a long time. It was quite another thing putting it into words. Then she consulted the register again, with its marginal notes. ‘Oh no, bronchitis, I see. Are you sure you’re better? You look very congested to me.’ Congested! I was on the point of fainting with fear, followed by relief.

So even into the school register our deception had succeeded. Succeeded so well, in fact, that I didn’t have a single ‘benefit’ concert. No chocolates or fruit for bronchitis. Only for scarlet fever, and I hadn’t had that. Or had I?

But if I hadn’t had the chocolates, I hadn’t had the ride in the dreaded ‘fever van’ either. Nor had anybody else in our house, or in our tenement during that epidemic anyway.

But that was a terrible risk my mother took.

Although we only had a room and a kitchen for the five of us, we never felt overcrowded, for our accommodation was palatial compared with many of the
tenement families. There were several large families living in a single room in our neighbourhood, or at best a single room with a tiny apartment opening out of it, not much bigger than a pantry. This small box-like room was considered a luxury to be envied by those who had to crowd into a single room, and they dreamed of what good use they could put the extra space.

One family in our tenement had fourteen children and they all lived in one room with just this small box-like compartment leading out of it, and once they actually held a wedding reception there when the eldest daughter was married. As the younger children came in from play, they quietly crawled under the festive table and vanished into the smaller room, where bags of chips were handed through to them, and they boasted of this treat for weeks afterwards. Long experience of living in such cramped conditions had trained them to play noiselessly and happily, and they might have been a family of mice for all the noise they made. Indeed some of the wedding guests never even knew they were there.

In all the years of my childhood, I never knew that family’s mother’s voice raised in anger. And the wedding feast was the only occasion I ever saw her without her working apron. On this one glorious night her eyes could be lifted above the level of the kitchen sink, and the bridal pair were waved off in a shower of confetti to their own little single end, which they had miraculously found ten minutes away, so visiting mother and the thirteen brothers and sisters would be no problem.

Farther along the street, another family of fourteen had a room and kitchen like ours, separated by a lobby, and both rooms of equal size. They felt they were so rich in space that they added to their meagre income by taking in a lodger. This was a great source of interest and mystery to me. I’d never heard of a lodger before, and viewed this man as somebody very special. He was on constant night-shift, which meant he slept during the day. None of us saw anything unusual in the fact that he surely slept in a bed which was used at night by several of the fourteen other occupants who, of course, slept at the normal time during the night. I thought this a most resourceful arrangement, making a bed earn its keep in this convenient way.