A Gift From The Gallowgate E-Book

Doris Davidson

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 522

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This is the extraordinary story of a remarkable woman. Doris Davidson was born in Aberdeen in 1922, the daughter of a master butcher and country lass. Her idyllic childhood was shattered in 1934 with the death of her father, after which, in order to make ends meet, her mother was forced to take in lodgers. In part due to her father's sudden death, Doris left school at fifteen and went to work in an office, gradually rising through the ranks until she became book-keeper. Marriage to an officer in the Merchant Navy followed in 1942, then divorce, then her second marriage. Her life took the first of two major changes in direction at the age of 41, when she went back to college to study for O and A levels, followed by three years at Teacher Training College. In 1967 she became a primary school teacher, and subsequently taught in schools in Aberdeen until she retired in 1982. Not content with a quiet retirement Doris embarked on a new 'career' and became a writer, publishing her first work in 1990. Eight books later (and another one nearly finished), she is one of the country's best-loved romantic novelists and has sold well in excess of 200,000 copies of her books. In this engaging and candid autobiography, Doris Davidson recounts her growing up in Aberdeen in the '20s and '30's, the war years, her marriage and the unexpected paths her career has followed. With her novelist's skill, she brings into vivid focus a life of rich experience in a book every bit as riveting as her works of fiction.

Leseprobe

A Gift from the Gallowgate

This eBook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Doris Davidson, 2004

The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-84158-415-0 eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-521-5

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Contents

Introduction

The Forsyth Saga

Schooldays

Leisure Time

A Working Girl

. . . And War!

Motherhood . . .

. . . Divorce

A Second Career

Catastrophe

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

I was born on the last day of June 1922, and my parents, Robert and May Forsyth, chose my name very carefully. Doris, according to the book of names they studied, meant the Gift of God. What could be nicer than that? When I was old enough to think for myself, I was secretly pleased that they hadn’t called me after somebody. Not that any of our relatives had outlandish names, but it was good to have a name all to myself. It has had its ups and downs, of course.

When I started my second job – in a tiny office in the Coast Lines sheds on Jamieson’s Quay – I’d to walk along South Market Street, the part of the harbour where the coalboats unloaded their cargoes. It was safer to go along the edge of the quay rather than the other side of the street, bustling, even in 1938, with horse-drawn carts as well as smelly fish lorries and whisky drays rattling over the cassies (the Aberdeen version of causeways, our granite cobblestones). Newly sixteen, I enjoyed the appreciative whistles and wolf calls of the seamen, black-faced with coal, the stevedores on shore and any other males who happened to be around.

Then I bought myself a handbag with my initials on the flap. ‘DF’ they proclaimed, in large metal letters that no one could miss, and everything changed. The whistles and wolf calls were suddenly replaced by sniggers, even loud splutters of laughter.

‘Oh, would you look at that!’ one black-faced minstrel sang out, looking round to make sure that his mates were listening. ‘She’s got her initials on her bag.’ He turned to me again, grinning. ‘What’s the DF stand for, darlin’?’

Pretending not to hear, I walked on. I wasn’t going to tell them anything about myself. Alas, another wag picked up the teasing, but he went a step further.

‘You shouldna need to ask that, Billy Boy. It’s simple enough – stands oot a mile. DF. Damn Fool.’

This was taken up by all, completely deflating my ego, and although I knew they meant it as a joke, I clung on to that bag, with its initials, to prove that I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to buy another one then, anyway, and there was no way to remove the offending metal letters that had been sewn right through the lining as well as the suede outer covering. I never told anyone about this incident, getting so used to the teasing that I would call back, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ when anybody asked the fateful question.

Many years later, my young sister bought a bag with her initials on. She was working in the office of Hall Russell and Company, Shipbuilders, and fared even worse than I had. ‘BF’? Poor Bertha!

In the early forties, I was astonished to read that Doris Day, a young American singer, had taken the film world by storm. I was well aware that she hadn’t been named after me, but I enjoyed the reflected glory that came my way because of it. In company, somebody always announced, ‘And now we’ll have a song from Doris Day . . . (long pause) . . . vidson.’ The only thing was – I couldn’t sing for peanuts! But I went to see all her pictures, bought her records, fell in love with all her leading men. Oh, that Rock Hudson! What a heartthrob! Why did some wicked journalist have to spill the beans on him when he was dying of Aids?

The girlish dreams I had cherished through thick and thin, through war and peace, through marriage and motherhood, were swept away as if by a raging torrent. Oh, well, at least Doris Day, herself, is still hanging in there.

My maternal granny also took an occasional dig at my name, though never in a nasty way. She could never be nasty. I used to spend a lot of time with her at the weekends when I was young (the word teenager hadn’t then been spawned), and I always told her what I’d been doing at school during the week, or at work when I started to earn my living.

‘Maybe your Mum and Dad thought Doris meant the Gift of God,’ she would say, giving a mock sigh, after I’d been speaking non-stop for ages, ‘but nae in your case, lassie. The Gift o’ the Gab would be mair like it.’

I wasn’t offended, or hurt in any way. I knew my Granny loved me . . . and she loved to know what had been happening to me.

Of course, admitting also to my middle name (after my mother) gave rise to more teasing. Doris May? As soon as one of the opposite sex learned that, he came up with a load of suggestions, innocently humorous or indecently lewd – depending on the type of person he was.

For instance . . . ‘Doris May? And will you, if I ask you?’

That perhaps doesn’t strike you as having a double entendre, but accompanied by a leer and a sly wink, you can bet your bottom dollar it had.

*

I’ve long passed all those stages. Any comments on my name these days come from other women. ‘So you’re a Doris, too? There’s not many of us left now.’

I usually laugh and say, ‘No, there’s not,’ but it makes me feel like I should be thrown on the scrap heap.

Just the same, it still gives me a real thrill to see novels I’ve written on display in bookshops. My first name lets readers know I’m not a young thing writing in today’s style, about today’s problems. Mind you, the emotions underlying today’s problems are not so unlike those of fifty or even a hundred years ago; only the underlying causes of the problems are different. But I don’t intend to lecture on something as controversial as this. I’m too old to argue . . . though I still have my off moments.

I’m inclined to agree, however, with my Granny’s assessment of me all those years ago, and my family will no doubt endorse it. The Gift of the Gab never really leaves a person, does it?

THE FORSYTH SAGA

(or My Saga as a Forsyth)

1

My father, Robert Robb Forsyth, served his time (or part of his time) as a cabinet maker – we had a beautifully carved oak wardrobe in the house for as long as I can remember – but, for some reason, he then took up butchery, learning his trade from his namesake father. He was one of the sons mentioned in the sign above the shop at the top of the Gallowgate. ‘R. Forsyth and Sons’, it proclaimed, proudly, but before they joined him, it had proclaimed, just as proudly, ‘R. Forsyth, Flesher and Poulterer’.

When anyone asked him why it didn’t just say ‘Butcher’, he always replied, ‘Anybody can be a butcher, but it takes skill to be a flesher.’

The other son of the sign was my Uncle Jack, but more about him later. A third son, Billy, was foreman in Murray’s Meat Market, the killing-house, or abbatoir, to give it its Sunday name. We’ll come to him later, too.

There were seven girls in the Forsyth family, the butcher’s daughters as my mother was told when she wondered who the three strapping damsels were who marched regally down the hill past the veggie shop where she worked. They were the three eldest, all well built even then. They gradually bloomed until they averaged around seventeen or eighteen stones, though it didn’t seem to bother them . . . or their husbands, for that matter.

They sometimes went to Blackpool on holiday, without their menfolk for some reason, and signed their postcards, ‘From the Three Fairies’. This always convulsed me. I could picture them dancing around in a circle (they were quite light on their feet considering their size . . . like Oliver Hardy, in fact), waving a wand in one hand and hoisting up wings and bosoms with the other. Awesome bosoms! I can recall Auntie Jeannie boasting that she could rest a cup and saucer on hers. She could, too.

The middle one in age, Jeannie, was a great swimmer earning several life saving certificates, and my cousins and I were made to go to the Beach Baths every week when I was about six or seven, to learn to swim. I was never very happy in the water, but Bella, the aunt assigned to me, was determined that I would not shame the Forsyth clan and battled bravely on. She used the method of holding me up at the back by the straps of my bathing costume, and I was making some progress across the water one day when I happened to look behind to make sure she was still there. She wasn’t, and with no confidence in my own ability (well founded, I may say) down I went, swallowing gallons of water mixed with large amounts of chlorine and small amounts of urine . . . or vice versa?

I never mastered that fear. The most I ever managed was about half a breadth before my toes took cramp. Jeannie, of course, took every opportunity to show off her skills. She dived from the very top platform and darted this way and that like a seal . . . an elephant seal? She made me feel ashamed of myself, but not enough to make any difference.

My mother and Auntie Ina, Uncle Billy’s wife, used to come along with us, and sat in the spectators’ gallery to keep tabs on our progress, but they were absolutely mortified one day when an oldish man, possibly there watching his grandchild, said to them, ‘I’m getting my kill at that fat woman. She’s making a right exhibition of herself, but you can’t help admiring her, can you? Not many her size would dive off the top board, and she hits the water with that much force, I’m aye expecting her to empty the pool.’

(Auntie Jeannie’s own description of hitting the water was, ‘If I don’t go in at the right angle, I land in a belly flop, and it feels like I’ve split myself in two.’)

Needless to say, Mum and Auntie Ina didn’t admit that they were in any way related to the ‘fat woman’, who had to give up swimming eventually because she couldn’t get a costume large enough to fit her. She had, as a last resort, actually knitted one, but you can imagine what happened. The weight of the water pulled it so far down that her hands weren’t big enough to cover what shouldn’t be on display as she came out of the pool . . . for the very last time! I hope the elderly gentleman wasn’t there on that occasion; the excitement might have been too much for him.

Robert Forsyth Senior also had four younger daughters, making up his total of ten children, three boys and seven girls, but none was so prolific as he. Between them, they only gave him seventeen grandchildren. One, Annie, emigrated to Canada in 1920, not long after her mother died, and didn’t marry until she was past childbearing age. She never came home, so I never met her, but she kept in regular touch with Jeannie, who seemed to take on the mother role for all her siblings.

Mum once confessed to me that, even after she married into the Forsyth family, her in-laws made her feel like a country mouse . . . which indeed she was, having only come to the city when she was about sixteen. My aunts and uncles could never have realized that she felt like this. They were extroverts with a tremendous sense of humour, and all very musical, Billy playing the violin and ukulele, Jack the mandolin, Bob (my father) the Japanese fiddle (one-stringed, with a horn at the side). He could also coax hauntingly beautiful tunes from an ordinary household saw using the same bow – his rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ brought tears to the eyes. They could all play the piano, and the girls had beautiful singing voices. I can’t recall hearing the men singing; we children were packed off up to the attics while the adults had their musical evenings.

I suspect that Mum felt lacking in some way when she was with them. She was oldest in a family of four, her father, James Paul, being a farm ser vant who, like all of that ilk, shifted his place of employment, if not every six months, fairly frequently. She had one sister, Nell and, eventually two brothers, James and Douglas. It must have been quite a cultural shock to her when her father got a job at Rubislaw Quarry and they flitted to Aberdeen. I’m not too clear about his job there, I think he was on the crusher, but Maisie was still a shy, naïve country lass, so naïve, in fact, that at twenty-one, she had an even greater shock when she went home from work one day and found a pram in the kitchen. ‘Whose bairn is it?’ she asked, and couldn’t believe what she was told. The infant was a new brother and she’d had no idea that her mother had been ‘in the family way’.

My mother was a very clever child even though she’d had to change schools so many times, but there had been no money to allow her to carry on her education, and it ended at Peterhead Academy when she was fourteen. Her first job was as a kind of maid/nanny to the owners of a ‘Johnnie-a’thing’ shop at Stockbridge, not far from her grandparents’ croft at Toddlehills, near Longside, which is only a few miles from Peterhead, if you want the exact location. She liked Mrs Duncan, the shopkeeper’s wife, and would have been quite content to stay there until she met a young man she’d be happy to marry, but her father had found a new job and insisted that she accompany them to the big city. I’m quite sure, however, that she never had any regrets about being uprooted.

In 1918, when she first saw the ‘butcher’s daughters’, their brother Bob would still have been with the Welsh Fusiliers in France. In the photos we have of him, he had three different cap badges during his army ser vice, because of the vast numbers killed in the various battles. The remnants of each regiment were amalgamated into one, taking the badge of whichever had most survivors. Reading a photo/postcard he sent to his sister Jeannie, listing the various places he had been, it is obvious that he was lucky to come through the conflict alive, yet it was only after my mother’s death that I discovered the Military Medal he’d been awarded for bravery in 1917. I made enquiries about it and was sent a copy of the commanding officer’s report for the three days in November when the Allies were trying to recapture a wood near Ypres. This certainly explained why the men under him were from so many dif ferent regiments, but only mentioned that Corporal Robert Forsyth had been commended for outstanding bravery in the field, and gave no details.

Mum and Dad must have met after he was discharged from the army – sadly, I heard nothing about their courtship, but I wish now that I had asked – and they were married in 1920. This was an eventful year for the Forsyth family. Jane, their mother (a most imposing figure of a woman from her photographs, always wearing huge hats with feathers or some sort of decoration) died having her gall-bladder removed in a private nursing home, and Annie emigrated to Canada. Billy, Jack, Bob (my Dad) and Jeannie all got married, although their father told Bob Mackay, ‘You can’t take my housekeeper away from me.’ Fortunately, Jeannie’s husband was quite pleased to move into the house above the butcher’s shop, where they lived until the property was condemned early in 1939. They were given a council house in the Middlefield area, where hundreds of new square blocks were springing up. With the intervention of a war, all of the condemned buildings in the Gallowgate would be left standing until well into the fifties.

My parents rented a two-roomed furnished flat in Rosemount Viaduct, an impressive street of granite-built tenements with shops at ground level, that sweeps down to the Central Library, the South Church (now called St Mark’s) and His Majesty’s Theatre. Aberdonians once knew this trio as Education, Salvation and Damnation, but that’s by the by. Dad paid £50 for the key to the flat, as was usual in those days, and he built a garage he named Erskine Villa (the make of his car) in a lane off Raeburn Place at the rear of our tenement. We could see it from our kitchen window. Our parlour looked up the hill towards S. Mount Street, with a big mill-like building as a focal point. This was a canning factory, where, for instance, the Coop sent their oatmeal to be tinned for exporting. It later became a secondhand (junk) store run by a man nicknamed ‘Cocky Hunter’, why, I don’t know. After the last war, this eyesore of a building was pulled down and replaced by a circular block of flats, which won the architect some special award. We ordinary mortals, though, look on this, too, as a monstrosity, and there have been whispers that it will be demolished soon.

Before he acquired the Erskine, Dad had a motorcycle/combination, and early snaps show me as a tightly wrapped bundle in my mother’s arms in the sidecar. Most of the men in the family, Dad’s brothers and brothers-in-law, owned a vehicle of some kind, from humble one-stroke motorbikes to the impressive Lagonda that was Uncle Billy’s pride and joy. Every Sunday, there was a mass exodus of Forsyths from the city – it’s strange that they all thought of themselves as Forsyths, even those who had just married into the family – looking for interesting places to have our picnics. I can’t remember bad summers in the late twenties and early thirties; it always seemed to be sunny, cold perhaps even in June, but still sunny. Ah, the rose-coloured memories of youth.

No buying sandwiches and ready-made pies or quiches from Marks and Sparks in those days, though. This was a time when wives were expected to cook everything themselves, long before Aberdeen at least had ever heard of Mr Marks and Mr Spencer. It was a case of each family carting potatoes, a basin to peel them in (water to come from the burns and rivers we parked alongside), salt, sausages and bacon, an ordinary pan, a frying pan, two Primus stoves, cutlery and dishes, not forgetting matches, because not one of the brood smoked. None of the men drank or swore, either, so although they were a somewhat raucous crew, there was no harm in them and they certainly knew how to enjoy life . . . which was just as well. Most of them died quite young.

Uncle Bob was the exception, surviving Jeannie, all her brothers and sisters and their spouses, and living until he was almost ninety. Before he died, he told me that Granda Forsyth had been a bit of a drunkard when he was young, which is probably why his three sons were teetotal. On another visit, Bob surprised me by sighing, ‘I’m the only Forsyth left.’ He was absolutely serious, and I didn’t have the heart to remind him that he never was a Forsyth. I suppose, in a way, it was a compliment to his in-laws that he considered himself born as one of them.

2

My earliest memory is of being taken through to Granny’s ‘room’ (the parlour) to see my great-grandfather’s coffin – James Paul, Senior. When his wife died, he had given up his croft at Toddlehills near Longside – not far from Peterhead on the north-east Scottish coast – which was in a sad state of repair and eventually accidentally burned down. This was the house pictured on the cover of my second novel as Rowanbrae, over sixty years later. The fire and the building of a bungalow on the site in the thirties were as near to the truth as the story came; the rest was pure fiction.

Well over eighty, Great-grandfather Paul had been living with his elder son in Aberdeen’s Ord Street for some months before his death. This became Quarry Street when I wrote Time Shall Reap, because Rubislaw Quarry was in close proximity. I was only about four at the time of his departure from this world, but I can still remember looking at the fearsome wooden object with its silent occupant, the bushy white beard resting on the satin lining, and saying, ‘Why’s Grampa sleeping in that big black box?’

*

While I was still a babe-in-arms, we went to Toddlehills in the motorcycle and sidecar on occasional Wednesday afternoons – Dad’s half day. Obviously, I can’t remember anything about those times or the place itself, but snapshots show that the house had a thatched roof and a big stack of peats built against the gable end.

Other photos show the old couple themselves, Greatgrandma in a long black bombazine dress, with her hair dragged severely back off her face . . . but it’s a kindly face. Her husband, on the other hand, looks quite stern, in a tweed jacket and trousers – I can’t tell if it’s an actual suit, probably not – and a snouted cap covering his white locks. They made a perfect Darby and Joan.

Once, when my mother was clearing out, she asked if I’d like to have her grandmother’s hatbox. She had kept it well hidden, but intrigued, I accepted with delight. There was nothing unusual about its slightly oval shape, but it was made of tin and painted black. The lid was hinged at the back and lifted upwards to reveal two mutches, much softer than bonnets, though similar in style. One was plain black, with wide strips of the same cotton material to tie under her chin. The other, also black, was beautifully adorned with loops of black satin ribbon, the extensions at each side becoming the tiers. This was her Sunday-go-to-kirk mutch, and according to my mother, was hardly ever worn on any other occasion.

I treasured that tin for many years, proudly showing the contents at every chance I got, but sadly, it was in a crate that went missing when we moved to our present home. Also lost was a waistcoat belonging to my husband’s great-grandfather – a truly magnificent creation of royal blue satin quilted and embroidered with gold. Willie Davidson must have been a real masher when he put it on, though I can’t for the life of me think of an occasion when he would have been likely to wear it. But he doesn’t belong here.

The visits to Toddlehills ended when the old lady died, of course.

It must have been in the mid 1920s that my Uncle Jim, my mother’s brother, was accepted for the Metropolitan Police and moved to London. As a bachelor, he lived in the Section House with the other unmarried young men, several other Scots amongst them, but soon began courting. Gwen Schaper, his lady friend, was the eldest daughter of an ex-sergeant/cook in the Royal Artillery, I think, who had taken over a hotel in Guilford Street, off Russell Square, when he ended his twenty-five years’ service . . . it may have been longer.

When I was six, we made the long journey to London, but it wasn’t until I mentioned it in the staffroom of the school where I was teaching some fifty years later, that I realised what an undertaking it had been. This was 1928 remember, seven years before driving licences were required, and when there were very few petrol pumps and even less garages on the road; very few proper roads, for that matter, mostly what were known as ‘unmade’, with no tarred surface.

Motorists had to learn by trial and error how to fix the engine when the car broke down, and I’m quite sure many faults were made worse through ignorance. But that was all part of owning a car, a challenge that most men must have enjoyed. The spare tyre was accommodated on the running board, where also sat a five-gallon can of petrol in case we ran out. I shouldn’t think my Dad was ner vous of making such a lengthy trip – he wasn’t that kind of person – but we did have friends with us, a Mr and Mrs Gammack, neighbours from Rosemount Viaduct, and you never knew what could happen out in the ‘wild blue yonder’. It was best to be prepared for any eventuality.

As usual, the boot was packed with all the necessities for making our own meals, plus a small ‘bivvy’ (bivouac) for Dad and Bill Gammack. I can’t remember the make of the car that made this daunting journey, but the door of the boot was hinged at the bottom, coming down to make a convenient table for our snacks. Whatever the make, it could cover the 508 miles as easily as any Rolls Royce; we just made one overnight stop at a place called Wreay, I think, in the north of England.

After having something to eat, Dad and Bill Gammack set up the ‘bivvy’ for themselves and the two ladies and I were to sleep inside the car. I am practically sure, however, that I was the only one who got any sleep that night. Even in July, it was still quite dark in the dead of night, and I was scared out of my wits to be rudely awakened by unearthly howls coming from somewhere close at hand. It turned out that the tent had been pitched on, or in very close proximity to, a colony of ‘forkytails’ – earwigs, to give them their proper name. They were crawling all over the two demented men, and Mum even had to fish one out of Dad’s ear with a hairpin. Not the best of medical equipment, you may think, but the only thing handy and it did the trick.

All thoughts of a peaceful sleep vanishing, we continued on our way, landing in London much earlier than we had expected. Of course, we took some time to find Guilford Street and Mr Schaper’s hotel, where we were to be staying.

Our host was a huge mass of a man, who did all the cooking sitting on a high stool. (His great belly sort of rested on the long table, and his vast behind overlapped all round the stool, neither of which seemed to bother him, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.) He didn’t have to move at all. With three sons and three daughters at his beck and call, he had everything he needed handed to him.

His wife ran everything else in the establishment, the ordering of food, the paying of accounts, dealing with the guests, making sure that her daughters kept the rooms spotless in their role as chambermaids, and were courteous and friendly in the dining room when they were waitresses – not too friendly, of course. She kept a strict lookout for any fraternising and quickly put her foot down if there was even the slightest hint of it. Mrs Schaper was no dragon, however. She was a small, slim woman, always laughing, always bustling about but never too busy to answer questions or to have a wee chat, if that seemed called for.

(I used the man, his wife and family, and his hotel, as models in the London-based part of The Back of Beyond, giving them different names.)

After we were given a lovely meal we were shown to our rooms, where we decided to unpack before venturing out into the great ‘metrollops’ (as I mis-repeated what my Dad said). We had another nasty shock. Our suitcases were moving with forkytails. They were inside everything, the feet of socks and stockings and even inside the ladies’ knickers – a rude word in those days and which were worn only under ladies’ skirts; men wore short underpants or drawers (long johns).

We never came across Wreay again in any of our travels over the years, although I recently found it in a large-scale map, but it remained in our memories as ‘Forkytail Hotel’. Ah, happy days!

On that holiday, we saw quite a lot of London’s attractions – Madame Tussaud’s, where Auntie Gwen was sent into hysterics by a young boy swinging a hanging body round in the Chamber of Horrors (the huge hook was through her stomach and blood was much in evidence . . . well, red paint) – the Tower, Nelson’s Column, and so on. We also found time to go shopping in some of the big stores. I can remember Mum buying me a lovely straw sunhat in Selfridges in Oxford Street – I even had my photo taken wearing it but I lost it before we even got home.

*

Uncle Jim and Gwen Schaper became engaged shortly after we’d been there, but their cosy, happy world was soon to be shattered. I don’t know the ins and outs of the operation he had to remove his tonsils, but from various accounts of it, I’ve gathered that a swab was inadvertently left inside. All I do know for certain is that it infected one of his lungs and by the time the trouble was diagnosed and that lung had been removed, the other lung was also badly affected. Both lungs, of course, could not be removed – there were no such miracles as transplants then – and his condition was so critical that his parents were sent for. Gwen insisted on marrying him although the doctors held out no hope for him, and the marriage ceremony was performed at his bedside.

He did sur vive, however, and was given enough compensation to buy a small grocery shop in Stoke Newington. But it was no real compensation. For the rest of his life he had a hole in his back about two inches in diameter, from which a rubber tube protruded. This was so that the poison from his one remaining lung could be drained out every day. Repugnant as this task must have been to her, Auntie Gwen carried it out manfully until he died, roughly forty years later. He had still not reached retirement age.

One incident comes to mind regarding Auntie Gwen. While her new husband was recuperating in hospital, she and her friend, Alice, came to Aberdeen by boat to see her in-laws (my Granny and Granda). This would have been about 1930 or ’31, and their cabin cost them £1 each. I was not much more than eight, but that was when I discovered how little the English knew about the Scots.

They were both pretty girls, dark and vivacious, but it was Alice who made their visit so memorable, stunning everybody as she came down the gangway, by saying, in a disappointed voice as she looked around the people waiting on the quay, ‘Oh, I thought all Scotsmen wore kilts and had red hair.’

This at a time when very few Scotsmen could afford a kilt and a redheaded man was not altogether common. My Dad had red hair though, as had his father, as had I, but then I wasn’t a man. Granda used to tell us we weren’t proper Forsyths if we didn’t have red hair, which upset those of my cousins who didn’t. Of those who did, only one actually had Forsyth as his surname. The others were either daughters of the sons, or children of the daughters, who, of course, bore different surnames.

Back to Alice. Her other gaffe came on the Sunday night when Granny set out home-baked oatcakes and a huge lump of Crowdie cheese on the table for tea, plus, of course, scones, pancakes, shortbread, strawberry and raspberry jam, all home-made. This was the usual Sunday tea, because dinner (lunch nowadays) had consisted of broth or some kind of soup, boiled beef, carrots and tatties, and maybe a jelly or semolina pudding or tapioca. There was no need for another three-course meal, but the tea-table was also laden with food . . . always.

Alice helped herself to a quarter of oatcakes – a triangle six inches at least at its widest because Granny wasn’t into elegance – and bit into it without spreading it with butter or having anything to drink. After swallowing what must have been a bone-dry mouthful, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, I know what this is. It’s porridge in the raw.’

I’ll draw the curtain there. If they had stayed for much longer, my poor Granda would have had apoplexy from trying to hold back his laughter.

Some years later, we visited the Paul family in Stoke Newington, in the house above the shop. Auntie Gwen had a wicked sense of humour and one morning, while the Italians in the ice cream shop in the street behind were all talking at the same time and flinging their hands about, my Dad said, quite innocently, ‘I wonder what they’re saying to each other?’

‘Would you like to say good morning to them?’ Auntie Gwen smiled, and proceeded to teach him a short phrase in Italian.

He was about to stick his head through the open window and repeat it, when Uncle Jim put his hand on his shoulder. ‘No, Bob, you’d better not. She’s taught you a string of swear words.’

There was laughter all round, but to this day, that phrase still comes to my mind occasionally. I hope I never meet any Italians, otherwise I might feel like airing my linguistic ability and end up with a broken nose.

On one of our holidays there, we went to Brooklands to the motorcycle racing, but got lost before we ever got out of London. Spotting a bobby on point duty at a junction, Dad stopped and asked for directions – in his very best English. To his surprise and our amusement, the policeman answered in the Doric, the broad Aberdeenshire dialect. ‘Weel, weel, laddie, you’re a lang wye fae hame.’

After a second, Dad joined in the laughter, and I was told to write down where the bobby was directing us.

The butcher’s shop closed early on Wednesdays, and in the summers we mostly visited Mum’s sister Nell at the various places where her farm-ser vant husband was cottared. Like so many farm workers, he only worked at each farm for the obligatory six-month period before going to the feeing market in Aberdeen to sign up with another farmer. They moved around a lot, mainly in Aberdeenshire, and I liked going to see them because there were plenty of cousins to play with, nine at the final count.

Eventually, however, they settled in Ellon, Auntie Nell’s husband taking up the life of a peddler in preference to the hard work on a farm. This was, perhaps, a good move for him, but not for his wife and family, for they only saw him occasionally, at longer and longer intervals until his visits stopped altogether. He never supported his children from the time he abandoned them, and Auntie Nell had a hard struggle to feed and clothe them, but she was a hardy woman, fit for anything.

On one occasion, the minister came to ask why she didn’t send her family to Sunday School and she answered him snappily, and completely honestly, by saying they didn’t have anything decent to wear – a sentiment probably sprinkled with an oath or two. Maybe swearing was the only way she could cope with the worry of where the next meal was coming from, or new shoes for the bairns, or clothes for school, and her colourful language didn’t seem to bother anybody – neighbours or friends alike came to her for advice in their troubles.

Our playground in Ellon was the north bank of the River Ythan – not a huge river by any means, but certainly deep and treacherous enough to carry off a child who fell in. No warnings were displayed, and although Auntie Nell generally said, ‘Keep awa’ fae the edge, mind’, we didn’t heed her. We could look after ourselves.

If the ball went into the water when we were playing football or rounders, or whatever, and got wedged in the weeds, one of the older boys would shin up a tree, inch along a low branch until he was over the water, and use a stick to try to fish it out. The rest of us watched with no idea of the danger involved, carrying on with the game as if nothing had happened when the ball was retrieved. Sometimes, sad to say, the ball dislodged itself and was carried away altogether, which meant the end of the game . . . unless we could rope in somebody else who could provide one. Looking back on the exploits we got up to then, I’m sure we must have had a guardian angel looking after us.

The only trouble we ever had came from people – men to be precise. Auntie Nell’s upstairs flat could only be reached by going through a close that also led to the back entrance to the Buchan Hotel, and quite often, we were verbally accosted (no physical abuse, I can assure you) by one or more drunks. They could hardly stand, so we called them names back, safe in the knowledge that they couldn’t chase us – Baldie, Fatty, Bandy, Baldy, Specky. My oldest cousin once tried Buggerlugs, but the cursing, fist-waving recipient wasn’t as drunk as he looked, and we had to run for our lives. A whole crowd of us tore across the quadrangle, up the outside stairs and burst into the house, many more of us than actually belonged there. Auntie Nell strode to her door and, looking over the top rail, she let rip with a mouthful of oaths of her own. She ended the exchange by shouting, ‘Awa’ an’ bile yer heid, ye drunken bugger!’

Her four sons all grew to around six feet, her five daughters all married with no scandals attached to them beforehand, so all in all, and even taking her linguisitic failing into account, she did a pretty good job of bringing them up.

Occasionally, we went to Peterhead on a Wednesday to visit a Mrs Lawrence, some sort of distant relative but I never found out exactly what the connection was – on my Granny’s side, I think. Over ninety, she was bedridden, and it amazed me to watch her propped up on what looked like dozens of pillows, knitting socks, wearing a ‘busk’ round her middle. This was a leather pad with holes in it where she stuck in her four knitting needles (wires, she called them) to keep them steady, or maybe because she hadn’t the strength to support their weight, I don’t know, but by Jove, she could fairly click on. This is the house I describe in The Three Kings, although I couldn’t have been much more than eight or nine when she died and I was writing about it sixty-five years later.

On winter Wednesdays, my father played football in the Shopkeepers’ League (none of them available for Saturday games). He was a very athletic man; a photograph shows him to be in the Porthill Gymnastic Club Session 1912–13, and another in the Excelsior Football Club 1919–20. When he was not so engaged, however, he took his wife and small daughter to the Cinema House, just along from where we lived in Rosemount Viaduct.

Mum often laughed about one particular incident but I can’t truthfully say that I remember it. It was during a silent film featuring ‘Baby Peggy’ (the Shirley Temple of her day) who often watches her Daddy shaving. One day when nobody is looking, she goes to the bathroom, stands on a chair to reach the shelf, and lifts his cut-throat razor. At that point, apparently, pre-school, I sprang to my feet and shouted, ‘No, Baby Peggy! No, don’t! You’ll cut yourself!’

I had watched my own father shaving, and he had often nicked his face with his open razor, so I knew how lethal it could be. Anyway, I think the usherette came and warned my parents to keep me quiet, otherwise we’d have to leave. This was a threat I dared not flout, so I sat with my hands over my mouth for the rest of that adventure of my favourite film star.

There were no trips on Saturdays. The butcher’s shop remained open all day; didn’t close until nearly nine, sometimes. There were always women who left it until the last moment to buy in their Sunday lunch – probably their men didn’t get paid until they finished work on Saturday afternoon and stayed in the pub until they reeled home fit only for bed. The Gallowgate was a poor working class area, with a diversity of employment for the unskilled – in the shipyards, the railway and the quarries, delivering coal and other commodities by cart. There were, too, some jobs in the comb works, glove factory, paper mills and Grandholm Mill, where they made Crombie cloth and tweed.

In the 1920s and ’30s, of course, even those who had served their time and were qualified tradesmen found themselves unemployed, having to sign on for money from the ‘Dole’ (‘the burroo’ in local terms) or the Labour Exchange to give it its proper title. For some, that was a disgrace, as, even more so, was applying to the parish for help. It was a time for Soup Kitchens, and although I only know of the one in Loch Street, which was still going into the sixties, there may have been others.

The two universities – Marischal College and King’s College – were only for those whose parents could afford to keep them there, but for some of those fortunate enough to be given that chance, there was no post open for them when they graduated, which is why so many left their home town and looked further afield – England, of course, and the Dominions.

But that is by the by. None of the Forsyths attended a university. Only the very rich attained that height. Clever boys from poorer homes stood no chance unless someone took an interest in them – a teacher or minister, perhaps, or a father’s boss – and financed them to a certain extent.

*

The year before I started school, Dad rented a big wooden shed at the side of a lovely granite house outside Kintore. It wasn’t more than ten miles from Aberdeen, but it was like we were in another land, another era. The house belonged to two elderly sisters, the Misses Taylor, who looked after their brother Joe. He had been gassed in the war, the Great War, that is. World War II was in the far distant future.

Joe did all the dirty jobs about the place, cleaning out the hen runs, doing what had to be done to the dry privy, making sure the midden didn’t spill over, as well as growing loads of vegetables – tatties, carrots, neeps, leeks, shallots, peas and broad beans. He also looked after the rambling strawberry plants, the raspberry canes, the gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes, so that his sisters could make hundreds of jars of jam for the winter. He loved jam, did Joe, and was often to be seen with a jam sandwich, what we called a doorstep, the slices of bread were so thick. There were no sliced loaves then. A loaf was bought, often still warm from the bakehouse, and wrapped in tissue paper to be carried home.

The sisters kept the front garden looking beautiful with all kinds of flowers – peonies, red hot pokers, rambler roses, pansies, hollyhocks, antirrhinums, nasturtiums – a mass of strong colours, and honeysuckle round the glazed front door, so that the evening air held a lovely perfume, helped by the night-scented stock.

These elderly ladies had also to do the housework and keep things in general looking spick and span. They didn’t wash their bedding in spring like most housewives did, but waited until the weather was more predictable. It turned out, therefore, that we were there when the blanket washing got under way, and I was allowed to tramp them in a big tub outside – a most enjoyable task – and to help to put them through the big mangle set up by the back door before they were pegged out on the washing line. Mind you, although the two Misses Taylor were always profuse in their thanks, I don’t think I could actually have done much to help them.

At first, I was a little afraid of their brother. Joe shuffled about, never saying anything, just a grunt now and again, but I liked to watch the swing of his arms as he chopped sticks, or dug into the pile of coal to fill the scuttle for the fireside. The fire had to be lit every day, to heat water, to cook, and so on, so although this was the middle of summer, he never removed his khaki jacket. Sometimes whole rivers of sweat poured down his face, but all he did was to wipe them off with his sleeve.

After a while, he began to smile at me, to stand in such a position that I could see what he was doing, even holding out the axe to let me have a try – I didn’t manage – and letting me hold the bowl while he collected eggs. The hens had a habit of laying wherever they felt like it, free range as it’s called now, and it sometimes took quite a time to find all their hidey-holes. By the end of our first stay with the Taylors, Joe and I were best pals. Mum was anything but happy about the association, I don’t think she lost her initial fear of him, but my dad laughed off her doubts.

‘He’s just like a child himself. He won’t touch her.’

Joe never did touch me – not that year or the next.

I can’t put a month to those idylls in the countryside. I have photographs of me helping with the haymaking, and in these parts, harvest isn’t until well into August. It could be that the second of our sojourns there, each lasting at least a month, was at a different time from the first, but in both cases, Dad went to work in Aberdeen on his motorbike. I don’t know how my mother filled her days on her own. I was too busy doing what I was doing, what I liked doing, to think about anybody else – selfish brat that I was! Maybe she rebelled at last, for our second stay was our last, though I always have happy memories of the Taylors.

I was newly ten when I was sent to my Granny’s sister at Gowanhill, a few miles from Fraserburgh, for the whole six weeks of the school summer holidays. I can’t really recall why, though I’ve the feeling that Granny thought I’d been looking a bit peaky. I had lovely auburn hair (I had, honestly, long and curly until it was cut), and the very fair skin that goes with it. I doubt if I was really under the weather, but Mum’s Auntie Teenie agreed to have me and that was it.

Uncle Jimmy Christie (pronounced Chrystie by his neighbours, which I always thought was swearing) was grieve at the farm, and we had visited them a few times before, so they weren’t complete strangers to me. I did feel a little weepy when the car turned a corner and just disappeared, but Auntie Teenie wasn’t one to waste sympathy where it wasn’t needed. ‘Get your case unpacked’, she told me, brusquely, ‘and get yoursel’ washed. You’ll be sleepin’ ben the hoose in Jean’s bed, so you’ll be a’ richt there.’

I did as I was told. I washed my face, hands and knees in the basin set out for me in the back porch, and was made to scrub my neck before I was shepherded into the tiny room which was to be mine for the next six weeks. In spite of the woman’s assurance, I wasn’t all right in the bed. I had a problem getting into it for a start, it was so high, then Auntie Teenie blew out the candle and I was left alone . . . in the dark . . . on a bed that moved with every breath I took. Not only that, something bit my arms and legs when I shifted them. I felt the mattress gingerly, wondering what kind of beasties were there, and wasn’t altogether relieved to find that it was stuffed with what felt like stalks of corn – the cause of what I’d imagined to be insect bites. I later found this to be what they called a ‘caff’ or chaff bed. I got to sleep eventually and also got accustomed to the animated mattress and having to pummel it every morning to raise it from the dead.

There were a few children in the same row of cottages and they were friendly up to a point, but they were much younger. Also, don’t forget that I came from the big city – a toonser, in other words – and was related to the grieve, the foreman, whose word was law. But Uncle Jimmy didn’t scare me. He took me under his manly wing at the farm, letting me mash neeps for the cows in a big machine that took all my strength to work. He let me try my hand at milking once, but I didn’t care for the feel of the cow’s udder. That and the lash round the face I got from her sharny, smelly tail was enough for me. I was definitely not going to be a milkmaid when I grew up.

Uncle Jimmy gave me a demonstration one afternoon of something I’ll never forget. I was watching as he scythed down some thrustles (thistles) when he suddenly said, ‘See this, noo.’

He pointed to an insect that had landed on the back of his hand and was now gorging itself on his blood. I stood transfixed as the little body grew redder and redder, and rounder and fatter, until it suddenly toppled over and fell to the ground, dead as a doornail.

‘It’s a gleg,’ Uncle Jimmy told me, ‘and it damn well serves him richt.’

I’ve never felt any inclination to find out if it was only the man’s weather-beaten hand that was lethal or if my blood would have had the same effect, and I never will. Losing a glegful of blood would be the death of me these days, not the gleg. If you are wondering what a gleg is, I have it on good authority that it is really a horsefly.

I did make one really good friend at Gowanhill, though – the orra loon – that is, the boy who did all the dirtiest, lowliest jobs about the place. I can’t remember his name, but he was quite flattered that I followed him around like a puppy, and showed me all sorts of things. He taught me how to whistle with two fingers in my mouth; how to put a broad blade of grass between my two thumbs and get a whistle from that; how to walk, then run, along the midden wall without falling in. The whistlings took me much practice to perfect, but walking the midden had to be mastered right away. I was terrified of falling in the middle of all that muck – and I never did. Isn’t it marvellous what fear can make you do?

The best thing he taught me, the pièce de résistance, was to fill a pail to the brim with water and then spin round, faster and faster with it held out at right angles to my body . . . without losing one drop. That was a marvellous achievement, but I never had occasion to show my prowess to anybody else. There was nowhere in Aberdeen that had the facility for such an exhibition. Nor have I ever had any cause to try out my powers of whistling.

Gowanhill had a shop attached to it, run by Mrs Sutherland, the farmer’s wife. Auntie Teenie often sent me up for something, probably just to get me out from under her feet, but one errand in particular sticks in my mind. ‘Jist ask for a half pun o’ tae’, she instructed me.

I ran to do her bidding – she wasn’t a bully by any means, but it was best not to get up her wrong side – and Mrs Sutherland beamed when I went in. ‘What can I do for you today, Doris?’ she asked, seeing that I wasn’t brandishing a paper list.

‘I’ve to ask for a haffpunnotay,’ I told her, unwittingly stringing the unfamiliar words together, ‘but I don’t know what it is.’

She burst out laughing. It must have sounded funny me using mangled Doric words in my normally perfect English, but she managed to explain that what my aunt wanted was half a pound of tea. It was mainly through living in Gowanhill that I became so familiar with the Doric that I often use in my writing, although my Granny and Granda helped a lot, as well. Mum used to frown at them for speaking so broadly, but it was so natural to them that I lapped it up.

I did enjoy my stay in the cottar house, but I was still glad to go home. I hadn’t felt homesick once while I was away, but the minute I set foot inside my own house again, I began to cry.

I had the surprise of my life that October. I was presented with a baby sister. At first, I loved the idea of playing with a moving, breathing doll, but I soon changed my mind about that. This ‘doll’ wouldn’t stop yelling its head off if I picked it up, and I was ordered to leave it alone. Besides, it was red-faced and not particularly pretty, but it improved as the weeks passed and I got around to thinking of it as her, she . . . or even Bertha. I was soon forced to admit that she was quite bonnie after all.

The only thing was, she got all the attention. Even Granny cooed over her, and sang songs to her like she used to do for me.

Far does my bonnie Bertha lie, Bertha lie, Bertha lie?

Far does my bonnie Bertha lie, the caul’ caul’ nichts o’ winter oh?

She lies in her Granny’s bosey, bosey, bosey,

She lies in her Granny’s bosey, the caul’ caul’ nichts o’ winter oh.

It really hurt that Bertha was now being held in my Granny’s bosey, although she did take me on her knee sometimes. ‘You needna be jealous o’ your wee sister,’ she would say. ‘Your Mammy and Daddy still love you as much as ever, and so does your Granda and me.’

I wasn’t too happy about going to Gowanhill the next summer. Baby Bertha would have Mummy and Daddy all to herself, and they might not want me back at the end of the holidays. On the other hand, I was glad to get away from nappies hanging all over the house when it was raining, and having to be quiet if the ‘wee darling’ was sleeping.

Nothing had changed at Gowanhill. Uncle Jimmy still took me to the farm with him occasionally so I’d be out of Auntie Teenie’s way, and on the whole, I enjoyed myself. There was a Sunday School picnic on one of the Saturdays I was there, and although I didn’t attend the Sunday School, just the church, I was allowed to accompany the other cottar bairns.

This was a strange experience. The minister tended to the needs of two different parishes – Rathen (centred in the church the Christies attended) and the joint fishing villages of Inverallochy and Cairnbulg. He usually held his service in the country in the forenoons one week and afternoons the next, allowing him to go to the coast in the opposite mornings and afternoons. I wish I could have sat in on at least one service at the seaside. How did the two sets of villagers behave towards each other as one congregation, I wondered?

As far as I was concerned they were all one, because there was only the width of a road separating them, but the ‘Bulgers’ didn’t like to be associated with the people of Inverallochy, and vice versa. The picnic was therefore divided into three factions, two of fisher folk and one lot of country bairns, including me by adoption.

The two dialects were completely diverse, the seafaring families inclined to add ‘ickie’ to every name and sound the ‘k’ in words like knee and knife. Here is a made-up example. ‘Johnicke’s cut his k-nee wi’ a k-nife.’ I was intrigued, and spent most of the afternoon trying to listen to them speaking. It was quite difficult, since those from each place kept to themselves, each group sitting apart from the other two.

On the last Saturday of that holiday, there was a wedding to attend. Meg Christie was marrying her lad. Mum had bought a lovely lemon taffeta dress for me, with a dear little cape round the shoulders and frills round the sleeves and the hem. It sounds horrible, but I was very proud of it. After the actual ceremony in the house, while the adults were drinking a toast to the happy couple and paying no attention to me, I remembered a tree along the road a bit where the branches were enticingly low.

Without a thought to my finery, I tiptoed off, scaling up that tree like the tomboy I had become when I was in the country. Alas, during my spell as a pirate scanning the horizon, I fell off the rigging and trailed back to my mother, crying my eyes out because of my bleeding knee. Mother-like, she was only interested in the three-cornered tear in my dress. Enough said.

My last holiday at Gowanhill was when I was twelve. The big house next door had new occupants, including two girls, one a little older than I was, and the other a little younger. They were tomboys par excellence and we spent every day, all day, doing things we shouldn’t. We never forgot to go back for something to eat, of course, but we had a marvellous time. Auntie Teenie was so relieved to have me taken off her hands that she got out of the habit of checking if I had washed myself, and so I made a few dummy splashes with my hands in the basin every morning and night, without letting the water touch any other part of me. I only had to be careful on Sundays, because she inspected every inch of me before we went to church.

Church was the Church of Scotland at Rathen, over the hill from Gowanhill, and in the pew in front of the Christies there always sat a very tall man, so tall that I couldn’t see the minister even when he was up in the pulpit. This meant that I had to find somewhere else to focus my attention. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the man’s head, completely devoid of hair (long before this became fashionable and probably due to alopecia) and bright red from constant exposure to the weather, was a skating rink for flies – attracting them in swarms. Time flew much quicker for me that year than normal, though I still can’t believe that he wasn’t aware of their antics.