weather had caused mayhem.
On Sunday, my father got up early and took the sandwiches she had wrapped in the waxed paper she saved from the loaves of bread we got at the Co-op. He went to work, saying he’d be back
mid-afternoon. I arose looking much better, but my mother decided against going to church. After lunch, she thought I was well enough to go to Coat’s Sunday School, five minutes from our
home, and she sent me off with Norman. As it was after three, she expected to see my father, but again he was delayed and she thought he must have gone to see Aunt Cis. When the door opened at
last, it wasn’t my father but her sister-in-law, my aunt Betty, who, like Aunt Margaret, stayed in Alexander Street just over the hill. She was breathless with hurrying, and frozen, her legs
mottled with purple and blue from the cold.
‘You’ve no idea what’s going on at our place!’ She threw herself on the couch and told my mother that men were combing the streets looking for a child, who had vanished
the day before. ‘There’s men everywhere, all checking our closes and coal cellars, and even the bins. They don’t have any idea what’s happened to this wee lassie at all.
Isn’t it terrible?’
My mother agreed. ‘Who is it?’
‘Someone told me it’s one of Andra Anderson’s lassies, the middle one,’ her sister-in-law announced, self-importantly. ‘Moira, I think she’s called, but I
could be wrong. He works in the creamery beside me at the Red Bridge. I hear he’s worried out of his mind, poor man. If she’s run off after an argument, and caused all this fuss with
the polis getting involved, then I bet he’ll kill her when he gets hold of the wee besom.’
When we kids returned, it was to find them tutting in disapproval over their tea. My mother asked me if I knew the missing girl. I said I knew her wee sister, Marjorie.
‘Och, she’s bound to turn up,’ my aunt Betty rolled her eyes heavenward, ‘and I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes when she does. She’ll be for it!’
‘No, no, it’s her folks I feel heart sorry for,’ my mother murmured. ‘They’ll forgive her anything, as long as she’s all right – you know what
it’s like when kids get you up to high doh like that. She’s probably shut in somewhere, from playing hide ’n’ seek. She’ll probably have just curled up and gone to
sleep. You’re right, she’ll show up, large as life, and wonder what all the fuss was about.’
But the days of searching turned into weeks. Aunt Cis left us, and though we never again met, her diary of the visit still exists with these events meticulously noted.
My father went off the scene again, the first of many prolonged absences, and our lives settled into a hardworking, yet uneventful routine without him, but as my mother took on the role of a
single parent I was given responsibility for things that today I would not dream of asking my young daughter to do.
As well as helping to parent my brothers, I went cleaning with my mother, at Falconer and Prentice’s, the quantity surveyors’ offices, in nearby Church Street, opposite the side door
of Woolworths. This made up part of the wages we sorely missed from my dad’s income. In those days, there was no income support or any single-parent benefit. On some occasions I went at dusk
to these offices on my own to clean them though I was not yet ten years old.
I thought the lives of my friends uneventful compared to mine. They went home from school to meals laid on by mothers who did not have to go out to work – then, the norm was for women to
be at home. I do not recall any of my pals doing char work as I did. Yet while my mother treated me in some ways as an adult and confidante, she also protected me from what she saw as information
that would taint me.
On one horrifying occasion I was attacked and assaulted in Dunbeth Road. My aunt Margaret was ill and my mother sent me to her house with some fish one evening. I trotted off, to
On Sunday, my father got up early and took the sandwiches she had wrapped in the waxed paper she saved from the loaves of bread we got at the Co-op. He went to work, saying he’d be back
mid-afternoon. I arose looking much better, but my mother decided against going to church. After lunch, she thought I was well enough to go to Coat’s Sunday School, five minutes from our
home, and she sent me off with Norman. As it was after three, she expected to see my father, but again he was delayed and she thought he must have gone to see Aunt Cis. When the door opened at
last, it wasn’t my father but her sister-in-law, my aunt Betty, who, like Aunt Margaret, stayed in Alexander Street just over the hill. She was breathless with hurrying, and frozen, her legs
mottled with purple and blue from the cold.
‘You’ve no idea what’s going on at our place!’ She threw herself on the couch and told my mother that men were combing the streets looking for a child, who had vanished
the day before. ‘There’s men everywhere, all checking our closes and coal cellars, and even the bins. They don’t have any idea what’s happened to this wee lassie at all.
Isn’t it terrible?’
My mother agreed. ‘Who is it?’
‘Someone told me it’s one of Andra Anderson’s lassies, the middle one,’ her sister-in-law announced, self-importantly. ‘Moira, I think she’s called, but I
could be wrong. He works in the creamery beside me at the Red Bridge. I hear he’s worried out of his mind, poor man. If she’s run off after an argument, and caused all this fuss with
the polis getting involved, then I bet he’ll kill her when he gets hold of the wee besom.’
When we kids returned, it was to find them tutting in disapproval over their tea. My mother asked me if I knew the missing girl. I said I knew her wee sister, Marjorie.
‘Och, she’s bound to turn up,’ my aunt Betty rolled her eyes heavenward, ‘and I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes when she does. She’ll be for it!’
‘No, no, it’s her folks I feel heart sorry for,’ my mother murmured. ‘They’ll forgive her anything, as long as she’s all right – you know what
it’s like when kids get you up to high doh like that. She’s probably shut in somewhere, from playing hide ’n’ seek. She’ll probably have just curled up and gone to
sleep. You’re right, she’ll show up, large as life, and wonder what all the fuss was about.’
But the days of searching turned into weeks. Aunt Cis left us, and though we never again met, her diary of the visit still exists with these events meticulously noted.
My father went off the scene again, the first of many prolonged absences, and our lives settled into a hardworking, yet uneventful routine without him, but as my mother took on the role of a
single parent I was given responsibility for things that today I would not dream of asking my young daughter to do.
As well as helping to parent my brothers, I went cleaning with my mother, at Falconer and Prentice’s, the quantity surveyors’ offices, in nearby Church Street, opposite the side door
of Woolworths. This made up part of the wages we sorely missed from my dad’s income. In those days, there was no income support or any single-parent benefit. On some occasions I went at dusk
to these offices on my own to clean them though I was not yet ten years old.
I thought the lives of my friends uneventful compared to mine. They went home from school to meals laid on by mothers who did not have to go out to work – then, the norm was for women to
be at home. I do not recall any of my pals doing char work as I did. Yet while my mother treated me in some ways as an adult and confidante, she also protected me from what she saw as information
that would taint me.
On one horrifying occasion I was attacked and assaulted in Dunbeth Road. My aunt Margaret was ill and my mother sent me to her house with some fish one evening. I trotted off, to
Similar Books
