The legendary harsh weather of the winter of 1947 began in early February and at first the snow was greeted with loud whoops of joy from the children. Before long an army of imposing-looking snowmen lined the street like some white, snowy guard of honour. Our snowman was a simple affair with pebbles for his eyes and nose but while the snow had still been soft George had drawn a sinister-looking half-circle for its mouth. This grin had an aura of menace which I noticed was missing from all the other snowmen.
If ours had the look of a Chicago gangster then the one at the far end of the street was the ultimate designer model. Made by Nan, a girl who lived in the second-last close, it was a creation with a long, flowing scarf and matching hat. It drew a lot of favourable comment from passers-by but it cut no ice with the rest of the kids.
‘It’s just swank, that’s what it is,’ said Jessie, who owned a rough-looking model, similar to ours.
In the late afternoon, after school and well into the early evening under the pale glow from the street lamps, the street would erupt into a frenzy of snowball fights and sledging down a small slope at Dallfield Walk on tin tea trays. Some people had the luxury of a proper wooden sledge but the majority had sneaked the old trays out from under their mums’ noses. All good things must come to an end, and soon our screams of delight turned to cries of agony when our gloves became solidly caked with snow, leaving our fingers white and painfully tingling.
As we rushed into the house, covered from head to toe in snow, we complained about the freezing cold. We peeled off our wet clothes, leaving mini-mountains of snow on the kitchen floor. Normally this infuriated Mum, who would tell us off for not shaking the snow away before coming up the stairs, but she now seemed to be tired and listless. She was barely able to drag herself out to the mill every morning. We had been so pleased by all the snow that we hadn’t realised the enormous struggle the workers were facing. It was bad enough having to get to work every morning without the added burden of struggling through a blizzard. Each day had grown worse with constant snow that left the pavements so deep in slush that even the children became bored with it.
Then one morning, about ten days after the start of this weather, things came to a head in the house. Mum could barely lift her head from the pillow let alone get up for the mill. I was sent to fetch Lizzie and when she saw Mum she was worried. ‘You’ll have to get the doctor, Molly. Keep Maureen off the school and she can go round to his house to call him out.’
Lizzie sounded quite firm, which wasn’t like her. Mum started to protest, her voice a hoarse whisper and her face as white as the pillow-slip. ‘Eh can’t afford the doctor, Lizzie. No, Eh’ll just take the day off and Eh’ll feel better tomorrow.’ This was debatable because she looked and sounded very ill indeed and her words came out in a painful gasp.
Lizzie was adamant. ‘Eh’ll lend you the five bob for the doctor if you don’t have it,’ she said hesitantly, as if this offer of charity might offend, but Mum was too weak to argue.
‘Right then,’ said Lizzie, ‘that’s settled.’
She gave me my instructions. After taking George to the school I was to go and fetch Doctor Jacob. He lived in Nelson Street and I think he had a small surgery in his large stone-built house. I could understand Mum’s hesitation at calling him out because five shillings was a princely sum. It was a recognised fact of life that the poor couldn’t afford to be ill and this was probably the reason for all the self-medication they indulged in, like Grandad with all his home-made remedies.
Doctor Jacob was a lovely man. Small-built with a bustling manner, he had a great down-to-earth persona which belied his vast medical expertise and knowledge.
His diagnosis was swift. ‘You’ve got pleurisy,’ he told Mum.
I can’t recall the exact treatment he prescribed but as he gathered up his well-worn and battered leather bag he gave us his orders.
‘Make sure the room is kept warm, day and night. Bank up the fire before going to bed so that the room keeps warm.’ Now this was easier said than done. Our coalman, who ran his business from a small shed in Ann Street, could allow his customers only one bag of coal per week.
Things were to get worse. As February dragged its snowy feet across the entire country and held it in a freezing grip, the colliers at the mines couldn’t deliver their coal. It had frozen solid, either at the pitheads or in railway sidings. As a result of this national crisis, our coalman’s shed, usually filled with black churls (small nuggets of coal), was now completely bare.
With our coal bunker almost empty apart from a thick layer of dross, I simply couldn’t light the fire until evening. Every afternoon I would race to the coalman’s shed after school, skirting round mountains of piled-up snow, but the story was always the same – no coal. As usual the neighbours were a big help, with Lizzie and Mrs Doyle doing all they could. It was agreed that I would come home every dinnertime and light the gas oven. I would put three pennies in the meter and leave the door ajar, and the room would have warmed up by the time I came home from Edmond’s cafe with a jug of their thick soup. Mum would have her tea and toast in the morning and her soup at dinnertime, then I would just have time to fill the hot water bottle before rushing off to school again.
Lizzie was worried about Mum’s thinness. She weighed only six stone and a few pounds and as she lay back on her pillow she looked pale and fragile, not unlike the porcelain doll on Cathie’s mantelpiece. Mrs Doyle would pop in during the afternoon to make a pot of tea and have a chat. During that long wintry spell the talk would tend to be about the atrocious weather.
‘Folk are saying there’s never been a winter like this in living memory,’ said Mrs Doyle. ‘Eh see from the paper today that a train had to be dug out of a snowdrift at Auchterhouse. It was seemingly stuck for three days. Can you imagine that?’
Mum couldn’t. The two women sipped their tea and watched the never-ending stream of snowflakes batter against the window. The cold empty hearth was another reminder of the dreadful conditions.
During the past few weeks when coal was unobtainable, Lizzie had taught me to make briquettes from the coal dross in the bunker. We spent a messy evening shaping the wet dross into bricks and placing them to dry out on newspapers that were spread over the linoleum. Trying to sidestep these black mounds had us moving like an elephant at the circus but they were a blessing during the long cold nights. We also made wet paper twists which when packed around the briquette would keep the fire glowing for a bit longer. But as winter tightened its grip with more ice and snow even these standbys soon ran out.
I was beginning to hate this weather. Everything was being disrupted because of the big freeze. Even our small bottles of school milk would show a frozen inch sprouting from the lid. The teacher placed them by the side of the radiators but that was never truly successful. It resulted in milk that was either half-frozen or full of icy splinters. I also hated the practice of milk-sharing which meant that one person drank half of the bottle and another one finished it. Going second meant a soggy straw or, in the case of some of the sadistic boys who flattened theirs by drawing their teeth down its entire length, no straw at all. The teacher stood no nonsense. Should anyone be daft enough to complain about frozen milk or a flat straw she would point out how lucky we were to get our supplies. She told us that some isolated communities had run out of food for themselves and fodder for their livestock.
I knew other people had problems but I had one of my own. It stemmed from my wet Wellington boots. Jumping through the deep snow would soak the inside of the boots causing them to chafe against my legs. The resulting ring of watery blisters and red raw skin tingled painfully in the warm classroom. While the teacher explained the intricacies of long division, with her chalk squeaking against the blackboard, my attention was solely on my sore legs. I thought longingly of the long scratchy stockings Grandad had knitted for my first term and how I had hated them. I reckoned this pain was my punishment for rejecting them at the time.
Fortunately, Mum noticed this sorry state of my legs and this was just as well because George’s legs were also going red. She told me to stuff dry newspaper into our wellies.
‘Go into the sideboard drawers,’ she went on, ‘and get the tin of petroleum jelly. There’s nothing better for sore legs.’
As we slapped on a thick layer of this ointment, Mum reached for her purse. ‘Now, before you go off to the school in the morning, go over tae the Misses Campbell’s drapery and get two pairs of knee-length hose.’
This shop at 99 Hilltown was a long, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned establishment that seemed to cling to an air of the nineteenth century while somehow having travelled intact into the middle of the twentieth century. It was owned by two sisters who were always helpful and good natured. Nothing was ever too much trouble for them. They would gladly pull open all the wooden drawers from the glass-fronted case and display their merchandise along the length of their counter should a customer be hesitant about a purchase.
I wasn’t one such customer. ‘Two pairs of woollen knee-length hose, please.’
Behind the counter were tall shelves holding dozens of boxes filled with assorted goods. These boxes jostled haphazardly with cardboard adverts for Vedonis vests and Ballito lisle stockings. One Miss Campbell deftly pulled a box on to the counter and asked for our sizes. Mum had written them down on a note which she had given me along with the clothing coupons needed for any purchase.
In our close-knit community everyone knew their neighbour’s business and the sisters had heard about Mum’s illness. ‘We hope your mum is feeling better now,’ they said, not exactly in unison but not far from it.
The stockings were just what we needed and were long enough to pull over the top of our wellies. From now on I was always careful of the snow, making sure I didn’t land in a deep patch and soak my boots again. After nearly two months of non-stop snow, I think the entire population was heartily sick of it.
One evening when the stars were glittering like gemstones in a clear black sky and the wind was bitterly cold, Lizzie appeared. She was wringing her hands in an effort to regain the circulation in her fingers. She pulled her chair close to the measly fire although the room was warm due to the fact we had also put the oven on. ‘Eh blame the war for this awfy weather we’re getting,’ she said, ‘Eh think it’s all the bombs that were dropped during the war that’s put everything haywire. First of all we get a braw Indian summer at the end of last year and now it’s like the North Pole. It fair makes you wonder.’
Blaming all the bad weather on the war and the emergence of the horrific atom bomb in particular was a common thought. The new word on everyone’s lips was radioactivity and the stories that were printed in the papers about the destruction of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were horrendous.
Mum cried when she saw them. ‘If that’s what it takes to end a war, then we live in a sorry world,’ she declared sadly.
The Japanese army had treated their prisoners of war dreadfully and some folk thought it was only justice to retaliate with the atom bomb. Lots of other people didn’t agree. What was clear, however, was that the world now had a weapon capable of destroying entire continents. At least it was in the hands of the Americans and not the Germans, who it seemed had been on the verge of discovering the secret of splitting the atom.
Radioactivity was also being blamed for the saga of the sour milk. For some unknown reason milk wasn’t staying as fresh as it should and the papers were full of complaints and accusations that unseen radiation from the atom bomb was the culprit. Denials that anything was amiss came from the poor beleaguered Labour Government Minister of Food, the much-maligned Mr Strachey. On the other hand, a bevy of farming experts had put their oar in, claiming that the milk was as good, if not better, than before the war and the atom bomb. Lizzie spoke the collected thoughts of the entire Hilltown when she said, ‘It’s this ruddy radiation that’s blowing around and the worst thing is you can’t see it. No wonder it’s turning our milk sour.’
By the beginning of April, Mum was getting better and was able to walk short distances, but she was still far from well. Her pal Nan suggested putting a kaolin poultice on her chest to help with the pain. She duly appeared with this and placed the small can of kaolin in a pan of water, setting it to heat up on the gas stove. When it was hot she spread a thick layer over a square of lint, almost like spreading bread with jam.
When Nan placed this concoction against Mum’s skin she let out a yelp of pain as the thick hot clay touched her. ‘Heavens, Nan! Are you sure you’ve made it hot enough?’ she said with sarcasm. ‘Eh mean, it’ll no take my skin off will it?’
Nan was confident in her remedy. ‘No, but you have tae leave it on for hours or overnight.’
As it was, it came off within the hour because Mum was convinced her skin would peel away when the poultice was removed. It would appear that I took after Mum with my doubtful opinion of home remedies. Nan did her best to explain that the poultice wouldn’t damage anything but Mum wouldn’t listen. Nan left feeling slightly miffed.
I knew Mum was worrying about money. With no pay coming in from the mill she was becoming depressed about her illness and the fact that the bills were mounting up. Then she became ill again with pneumonia. On the spur of the moment, and without telling anyone, I wrote to Dad in Grimsby. His letters with a money order enclosed were irregular to say the least and I was convinced he would be over-joyed to hear from me. It was a short letter. I mentioned Mum’s illness but, being stumped by the proper spelling of her medical condition, I called it ‘numonia’.
Every day after school, I checked for his reply, which I hoped would include a few pounds to help Mum out, but after two weeks I gave up. My disappointment was intense. I was so sure I would receive a letter from him that I even used to lift the small square of lino behind the door in case the letter had somehow slipped under it.
Afterwards I convinced myself that my letter might have been too direct and cheeky. Dad always said I was ‘lippy’ and I agonised over its contents. Had I asked him how he was keeping? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps he had taken umbrage at my impertinence and lack of news about George and our home. Then it dawned on me that his reason for not replying could be something as mundane as having changed his address. To be fair, I still think that was the reason.
Still, life wasn’t all doom and gloom. The coalman had received a consignment of coal and he was supplying all his customers with one bag of fuel. Judging by the warm reception he got from everyone he must have felt like King George VI. The greeting he got from one old woman was retold through the street grapevine. ‘Och, you’ve managed to bring me coal at last, son! Eh’ve been reduced to burning old shoes just to get a glimmer of heat!’
Mum had a good laugh when the coalman told her but she was also amazed. ‘Well, all Eh can say is she’s damn lucky to have old shoes to put on the fire. Some folk just have what’s on their feet. Like me, for instance.’
When the coalman dropped his bag of fuel into the bunker it made a loud clatter because the previous buffer of dross had been used up. ‘Eh’m hearing that clatter in everybody’s bunkers,’ he chuckled, ‘but there’s tae be no let-up in this weather. Eh just hope the coal doesn’t freeze up again.’
‘Och, Eh hope no,’ agreed Mum, ‘otherwise we’ll be getting scraped off our beds like frozen mummies.’
Meanwhile the doctor had given Mum some advice which she soon relayed to Lizzie. ‘He said that if Eh was a rich woman he would have advised me tae take a sea cruise but, because Eh don’t have two brass farthings, the next best thing is a daily walk along the Esplanade.’
Lizzie thought this was an excellent idea. ‘Eh hope you take his advice, Molly. As soon as the brighter nights come in you should make a start.’
So it came to pass. By the end of April we had begun to take a daily stroll along the wide, tree-lined Riverside. Sometimes the river would be flatly calm with a brown-tinged, oily, slick look while other days saw the wind whip up the water into a frenzy of salty spume. As the three of us walked along beside the low wall, the sea spray slapped wetly against our faces. It was like walking in a shower of fine drizzle but we stoically braved the elements on our daily march towards the railway bridge.
The sprawling framework of the Tay Bridge marked our boundary and when we reached that point we retraced our steps, hopefully with the wind at our backs. Often to our delight we would see, through the criss-cross tracery of the iron girders, a train puffing majestically across the river from Wormit station with its telltale plume of smoke drawing ever nearer. George and I would make a mad dash to be standing under the bridge when it passed overhead. The rattling, metallic clatter was deafening but this was all part of the pleasure. We jumped up and down and tried to speak but were deafened by the roar of the locomotive as it rumbled towards Taybridge station.
Mum could never understand this ploy. ‘You wouldn’t catch me standing under that bridge for a hundred pounds. No after the last time.’
She shivered slightly and I didn’t know whether this was because of her recent illness or the thought of the tragic Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 in which, one stormy December night, a train and all its passengers crashed into the dark depths of the river when the high girders in the middle of the bridge were blown down. As far as she was concerned, the bridge had fallen down once and nothing would convince her that the new structure was safe.
On our return journey Mum liked to sit on one of the benches that were strategically placed along the riverside walk. On these occasions George and I liked to run over to the sea wall and peer at the white-tipped waves as they lapped the stone surface. Clumps of shiny green-brown seaweed were anchored to this wall, floating on the surface of the river like a mermaid’s ribbon. Because of the high tides it was possible to lean over and grab a handful of this and many a happy hour we spent bursting the seaweed’s sacs.
Jessie said it was possible to forecast the weather with a small piece of seaweed. ‘Just put it on the windowsill. If it’s wet then it’s going tae rain and if it’s dry then it’ll be sunny.’ This was said with the confident air of one who knows what they’re speaking about; an oracle. We tried this bit of amateur weather forecasting but we never knew if her statement was true, mainly because our seaweed specimen had vanished the following morning.
George was disgusted by the lack of foresight on Jessie’s part. ‘She mentioned the rain and the sun but she didn’t say what it meant if it disappeared.’
When tackled about this Jessie had a ready answer. ‘Well, it’s like this: it’s wet if it’s rainy, dry when it’s sunny and if it’s no there in the morning you know it’s been windy. Simple.’