31

FAMILY LIFE

Travelling people hate to part with their weans, even for a visit to relatives, and I was no exception. If for one day my wee boys were not under my wing I was unable to get on with everyday routine for worrying about my children. Johnnie had reached the age I dreaded; he was going to school. When I think back to those years I can still see his wee face all lit up with excitement. He wore grey trousers, shirt and jersey, black shiny shoes, satchel over his shoulder, ready to face a bigger world than the tiny storytelling one I’d cocooned him in.

Stephen whinged that first Monday morning because he wanted to go with his brother, but when I promised him a lollipop he sat quiet and watched his big brother, all five years of him, leave to take his place on the first rung of society’s ladder.

We left early to visit Davie’s parents first, because Margaret needed to see the new schoolboy in his uniform. I remember the way she fussed over him before slipping a folded handkerchief into the breast pocket of his blazer. That made me blush red, because I should have remembered a hanky, but she smiled, obviously aware of my embarrassment, and said, ‘that was his father’s first hanky, I’ve kept it for his wee boy.’

I felt unwell that morning, and put it down to leaving my child in the hands of complete strangers, but when I saw those other mums, some crying their eyes out, I thought mothers are the same the world over, be they scaldies or travellers. Stephen got his lolly, and for a while we walked about Crieff chatting to folk. Crieff folks love to blether, and even today when you wander through the town you’ll see them just standing about the place chatting away, forgetting the time, just enjoying a crack. Stephen and I had a coffee in Rugi’s Café, which was a favourite spot for women taking a break from shopping before either heading downhill to collect school kids, or in the case of older women, going home. Crieff’s High Street splits the town, with half uphill and the other down. So the folks going down needed a break before returning, and the ones climbing uphill needed refreshment when arriving.

When it was time to collect Johnnie, it couldn’t come fast enough. My God, how I missed my wean, and him only out of my sight for three hours. Lining up with all the other mums at the school railings, I watched as one by one the little primary children filed out like soldiers. He saw us first and came running towards me, eyes filled with tears. ‘Mammy, I done school and dinna like it, so I winna be going back!’

Well, as it happened he’d been in the middle of a lesson when the teacher gave a child a row. Her loud voice and stern face frightened him, so with half a tinker in his blood, he told the teacher she was a ‘Banshee’. That resulted in him getting a row and being made to sit at the back of the classroom. I tell you it took some powerful amount of persuading to see my laddie don that uniform the next day and walk back to face the ‘Banshee’.

My feeling unwell soon resolved itself in another pregnancy. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because after having Stephen the doctor warned my health might suffer if I became pregnant again, and he tried to convince me to have a sterilisation. However I wanted a girl, and if one didn’t come, only then would I get the operation; one way or the other, I needed to try.

I kept on working as long as I could, and what with seeing to my husband and ever-growing laddies, plus a baby on the way, all thoughts of my past and the ancient history of my people was, like a family heirloom, folded and put away in a cold linen drawer. No more did I cling to the memory of my dear old bus, or those wild remote places I so cleaved to in the olden days. Gone were the berry fields o’ Blair, and bracken-cutting in Inverary. Filed away in the further reaches of my mind were the bowed tents filled with dirty-faced weans laughing and dashing from yellow broom to knotty oak. The clan system maintaining ancient feuds, which had me loving some tribes and terrified of others, was just a lost memory. I was now the property of mainstream society. My life was insured through a red-faced collector for the Co-operative, who came every Friday at tea time. I was registered with the local health practice; even the mole on my back and the scar above my forehead was noted on a record held along with thousands of others in a doctor’s surgery. Even my teeth were counted, and unwillingly filled each time I visited the dentist—and if I failed to go he warned me that rotting teeth would poison my blood. Well, if I had bettered myself then it certainly didn’t feel like it; yet how easily one slips into the way of life that is dependent on others. I’d never wanted to be a link in that chain of settled, controlled members of society. I remember seeing a film about Dracula, and in a strange way I envied him because he changed at night into a bat and flew over cities and people. Lucky sod, was all I thought when I left the cinema.

I hated other people knowing my business, poking eyes and ears into my affairs. Yet everybody was centred in the same small community. However, I knew the importance of my past, at least what it meant to me, and I allowed the farmer to close the gate but not to lock it. One day, when my role as mother was no longer needed, this old cow would bolt through that gate and run free onto her familiar pastures.

A lovely, dark-haired, beautiful baby girl, born on 14 June 1972 when the summer was at its height, completed our family. Because of my contracted pelvis the sterilisation took place immediately after the caesarean birth. The pregnancy wasn’t as simple an affair as the other two; sickness and painful backache plagued me for the whole nine months. My baby, who we named Barbara after my youngest sister, weighed only five pounds five ounces, but she was perfectly healthy. I could hardly believe how tiny she was. Davie was frightened to pick her up.

My stay in hospital could have been easier, though, had I not taken an infection. Let me tell you about it. I had been in for seven days when the nurse who removed my stitches thought two of them looked a bit red. She said that before going off duty she’d check my scar. I was to be going home next day. That evening, at visiting time, Mammy came in and said, ‘what’s the matter with you, lassie, your skin’s yella!’

‘Mammy, I’m fine, I got ma stitches out nae mair than four hours ago, see.’ I pulled back the covers to let her examine the scar. ‘That’s alright, but I still think you’re a funny colour.’

Well, the visiting hour passed, but my mother knew something wasn’t right, and when she left me she headed off to speak to a nurse. When she voiced her concerns, staff assured her that I was fine. Mammy, however hard the staff tried to convince her, would not leave until a proper doctor listened to her woes. ‘Doctor, I ken these things, now that wee lassie lying in thon bed has the poison in her. Please give her another check, because I’m never wrong.’

This kind doctor had Mammy brought a cup of tea and said he’d do a check on my blood himself, but it would take several hours for results. However my nurse, the one who had promised to look at my scar before she went off duty, was to change the ward’s plans that night. She smiled and said as she lifted the thin piece of gauze from my scar, ‘well, Jessie, I’m off duty now, but let’s see this...’ Whatever she planned to say never came from her lips, as immediately her fingers were covered in red and yellow gunge. Infected fluid oozed from my scar like a hot volcano as the stitched area split open. I don’t remember much from then on, only my mother screaming—‘I telt ye, now. Ma bairn, ma bairn!’

Well, as it turned out I did have blood poisoning, and did that not half put the dampeners on me getting home. Back into the theatre I went to have all the rotting tissue cut out, and then for another seven days I laid on my back while tons of antiseptic gauze was packed into the open wound. Before each meal I was given a great big injection of penicillin.

What concerned me more than anything else was my sons; I hadn’t seen them for the whole time I spent in the Maternity ward, and boy did I miss my laddies. Davie’s parents looked after them well enough. I remember when Margaret sent them to visit. She didn’t come herself, as she hated hospitals, but Sandy brought my wee boys to see me. They weren’t allowed in because I was in a room on my own due to infection. What a shock I got, because when they walked round to the French windows to look in, all I could see were two wee Lipton’s orphans. Margaret had dressed them in belted tweed coats, and they’d had their hair cut in the shape of a bowl. If you have ever seen photos of war refugees, then that’s what they were like.

I’d dressed my boys in trendy gear and let their hair grow longish; like wee hippies they were until my mother-in-law got her hands on them.

Still, that was the least of my problems. I had to be restitched, but that didn’t bother me, it was getting the buggers out that worried me. Because of the severity of my failure to heal, massive deep tension sowing was done on my wee belly. I couldn’t get a minute’s peace from worrying about these new stitches rupturing again—would I never heal? This certainly became an obsession with me, so a bit of diversion therapy was applied by the staff. Every four hours my wound was cleaned and checked. On the seventh day a stern-faced nurse came in to do the duty. I’d never met her before, and wondered where the other nurses were. She didn’t answer me, just got on with what she was doing. I tried several times to converse with this guffy-faced mort, but nothing doing. Still, I’m not one to give up, and told her that on the previous night I’d seen from my window a new father enter the main ward all the worst for drink, probably he’d be celebrating. Well, she sank me a look that would have scuttled the Bismarck and called me an interfering busybody, with nothing better to do than laugh at others’ misfortunes. I can tell you here and now that nurse was lucky I didn’t burst the nose on her flat face. I told her to clear off and send another more civil nurse. It was then she pulled off her rubber gloves and plumped the pillows behind me saying, ‘you can get up now, lass.’ I told her I could not move until the stitches were removed. Her answer was, ‘what stitches?’ That nurse had been sent to get my mind off the removal of those deep tension stitches, and by talking about the drunken father I had given her the chance to get my mind onto something else—hating her.

Well, from then on I never looked back. Me and Barbara, who’d put on a whole two pounds in weight since her birth, went home to the rest of our family. In a short while the boys had longish hair and were wearing flowery shirts and dungarees again. Margaret’s wartime coats were passed on to a travelling woman, more than grateful for such warm garments, who came to my door doing a bit hawking.

Within six months we had moved to Murrayfield Loan, a new block of flats. This place with its mod cons would see us through another eight years in Crieff, before we flitted to a more substantial house. But before we leave Gallowhill, let me tell you about Davie’s crabbit old Granny.

I won’t linger long over this, so here is all I know of her. I can’t speak ill of anyone and don’t intend to, but even although this wiry old lady had long since died, she left her presence in the house. It was nothing I could honestly put my finger on, but you know when something isn’t right. In that house I had that feeling many a time.

A breath of air against my cheek as I’d pass by one particular place would bring me from a train of thought to see if I’d left a window open. Dishes arranged in a certain way would mysteriously be changed from one shelf to another. Lights were switched off when no one was in a room. These things are easily explained, I expect, but one thing I can swear on my heart was down to her was the way my bed-making wasn’t to her satisfaction. I’d make the bed as usual in the same manner daily by tucking in the blankets and sheets, and leave the room, yet when I’d go back they were untucked. I always laid the top cover with a lacy bit to the bottom; she turned it to the top. This happened every day, until I made the bed the way she desired it to be made.

What I didn’t know at the time was that both the bed and those covers were at one time hers! I thought they were part of the furnishings we had rented with the accommodation, and indeed they were, but after the Smiths died the new owner had inherited certain pieces that were theirs.