That McAdam
by Gordon Gibson
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: None.
Description: A reflection upon childhood and the nature of memory.
Swearwords: None.
Description: A reflection upon childhood and the nature of memory.
My memory is not what it was. Nowadays, when I try to recall particular times or places, I can't help thinking of those archaeologists on the television, scraping away centuries of muck or rubble until they come across the residue of the past. And even then, although they think they know what they have found, they can rarely be absolutely sure that their interpretation is correct. That's how it is with me, much of the time. Then, for no reason at all, a word or a smell or a picture will throw up something into my mind, and leave me wondering whether it's really a memory, or whether I'm just making it up.
A case to point: I was down at The Bay Horse for a Pensioner's Lunch one day in the spring – you get a decent lasagne at a reasonable price, and there are always other old duffers to chat to – when Jimmy Patterson started one of his rants.
'The Royal Family,' he said. 'That's aw that was on the television last night. In black and white tae. Ah'm sick hearin aboot them.'
Jimmy's a fierce Republican, and the media coverage of The Royals is always a torture for him. There had been a documentary about The Coronation, and it had been the last straw for Jimmy.
'Bad enough that ah had tae sit through it sixty-odd year ago. Whit are they doin showin it again?'
Just for devilment I said, 'You never sat through anything of the kind, 60 years ago. You didnae have a telly 60 years ago. You didnae have a backside in your troosers until you started work.'
That set him off, and for the next twenty minutes he hardly took time to draw breath, what with curses and slanderous accusations aimed at The Royals. Everybody in The Bay Horse is used to Jimmy, and nobody really minds as long as he doesn't go on for too long, but his tirade suddenly brought into my mind a whole cluster of memories about 1953.
That was the year of the Coronation, the year I started school, a year that left such an impression on my child's mind that it has never been forgotten. Although many other events in my life are now vague and distant, things from that particular year still seem bright and clear.
Back then I lived in a dilapidated sandstone tenement in Donaldson Street, surrounded, for the largest part of each day, by the wives of the community. They were days of going shopping to stores with sawdust on the floor; of doing the weekly wash in the back-court wash house, playing with mud and soapsuds while my mother scrubbed; of the mopping of the close until it reeked of disinfectant; of the beating of carpets hung over the washing line, taking a turn to swing the huge cane paddle; and always there was gossip.
I was too young to wander far on my own, and most of my time was in the presence, if not exactly in the company, of those females. The men spent all their days at the steelworks. From early in the mornings until late in the afternoons, the women were completely in charge of life.
Of all the women in the street I liked Mrs McAdam best. She and her family lived across the close from us. She always seemed to notice me and made jokes with me while other adults usually paid me no heed. She was not like the other women for she had a job and went off to work every day. She was a sales assistant in the co-operative drapery store, and was always dressed in a closely-fitting suit, with a tight pencil skirt and shoes with thin, pointed heels. She had the blackest hair I had ever seen, and lips that were bright scarlet and shiny. I thought she was very beautiful.
Most of the other wives stayed at home, and there was sometimes a note of disapproval in their voices when they spoke about her. She was referred to as ‘That McAdam’, as if there was something not quite right about her.
Her husband, Hugh, was a baker and worked odd hours, leaving home before dawn and returning in the early afternoon, when he went straight to bed for a sleep. There were also two daughters, one a teenager still at secondary school, the other older and already employed in a lawyer's office. Mrs McAdam got back from her work about six o'clock, when Hugh had a meal ready and on the table. Then, every evening, he would go out to the pub.
This caused my mother to say, 'I don't know when they two ever get a chance to talk tae yin anither.' She announced this with a shake of the head and a strange expression that was a mystery to me. I had heard them talking lots of times.
Despite this, my mother and she seemed to get on fine, stopping to blether when they met in the close, and sharing much laughter. They would help each other out, fetching groceries from the shops, lending a cup of sugar or taking in the washing if the rain came on. So it was that, one day, for a reason that I cannot now recall, I was left in the care of Mrs McAdam - it was her half-day - while my mother went off on some errand of her own.
I had never been in her home before and I was delighted to find it quite different from ours. There were softer cushions than the ones we had, and there was a little scullery off the living room, with a cooker, a kitchen cabinet and a sink. Our sink was in the living room. Things seemed fancier at the McAdams'.
I do not remember much about how we passed the afternoon, except that it was pleasurable to be the sole focus of Mrs McAdam's attention. None of the rest of her family was present and I had her entirely to myself. Unlike my mother she did not busy herself with house work, but sat on the floor beside me while we played with toys that must have once belonged to her daughters. There was, I recall, a wooden Noah's Ark with pairs of brightly painted animals. The time drifted gently past.
Then, with no warning, she picked me up and carried me into the scullery.
'You need a wash,' she said, and began to undress me.
There was nothing particularly unusual in this. In my own house, I was washed every day, placed in the kitchen sink, standing in a basin of warm, soapy water, and rubbed all over with a flannel. But in Mrs McAdam's tiny scullery, there was a greater cosiness, as well as the exciting strangeness of being in an unfamiliar place.
Then, to my astonishment, she took off the blouse she was wearing, and stepped out of her pencil skirt, revealing a soft pink slip such as I had never before seen. It covered her body loosely, and was made from a fabric that seemed to shine.
'Don't want to get my good things all soapy water,' she explained, and set about washing me.
She used a sponge, an object unfamiliar to me, and soft on my skin. She did not scrub roughly as my mother did, but caressed me slowly and gently. To maintain my balance, I leaned towards her with my hands on her shoulders. They were warm and soft, and I remember still her smooth breasts moving beneath the slip, and the glimpses I was granted of her brown nipples.
Then she dried me with a fluffy towel - much softer than any of ours - wrapped me in it and carried me to a bed in a recess on the far side of the living room, where she tucked me, naked, under a quilt.
'Time for a sleep,' she whispered.
I remember nothing else about that day, but the wash in the scullery remains vivid in my memory. It still returns to unsettle me, as it has done time and again over the past sixty years.
Mrs McAdam did not live in our close for long after that. Listening in to adult conversations over ensuing years I learned that she had left her husband and two daughters to run off with someone my mother called 'her fancy man', a lingerie salesman who had visited the store where she worked. To the wives of our street, it was no more than could have been expected, and there was even a hint of delight in their voices when they spoke about her. Hugh and the girls were afforded much sympathy, though as far as I could see, their lives were hardly altered.
I did not fully understand all the conversations in hushed tones that followed her departure, but I was distraught when Mrs McAdam left. I missed the click of her heels on the flagged floor of the close, and her call of 'Hiya, pal' whenever she saw me. Not even the pictures I collected of parading Horse Guards or the new Queen’s golden coach could overcome my sense of loss. That distant afternoon remains as clear in my mind as if it happened only yesterday. Or at least, that is how I think I remember it.
A case to point: I was down at The Bay Horse for a Pensioner's Lunch one day in the spring – you get a decent lasagne at a reasonable price, and there are always other old duffers to chat to – when Jimmy Patterson started one of his rants.
'The Royal Family,' he said. 'That's aw that was on the television last night. In black and white tae. Ah'm sick hearin aboot them.'
Jimmy's a fierce Republican, and the media coverage of The Royals is always a torture for him. There had been a documentary about The Coronation, and it had been the last straw for Jimmy.
'Bad enough that ah had tae sit through it sixty-odd year ago. Whit are they doin showin it again?'
Just for devilment I said, 'You never sat through anything of the kind, 60 years ago. You didnae have a telly 60 years ago. You didnae have a backside in your troosers until you started work.'
That set him off, and for the next twenty minutes he hardly took time to draw breath, what with curses and slanderous accusations aimed at The Royals. Everybody in The Bay Horse is used to Jimmy, and nobody really minds as long as he doesn't go on for too long, but his tirade suddenly brought into my mind a whole cluster of memories about 1953.
That was the year of the Coronation, the year I started school, a year that left such an impression on my child's mind that it has never been forgotten. Although many other events in my life are now vague and distant, things from that particular year still seem bright and clear.
Back then I lived in a dilapidated sandstone tenement in Donaldson Street, surrounded, for the largest part of each day, by the wives of the community. They were days of going shopping to stores with sawdust on the floor; of doing the weekly wash in the back-court wash house, playing with mud and soapsuds while my mother scrubbed; of the mopping of the close until it reeked of disinfectant; of the beating of carpets hung over the washing line, taking a turn to swing the huge cane paddle; and always there was gossip.
I was too young to wander far on my own, and most of my time was in the presence, if not exactly in the company, of those females. The men spent all their days at the steelworks. From early in the mornings until late in the afternoons, the women were completely in charge of life.
Of all the women in the street I liked Mrs McAdam best. She and her family lived across the close from us. She always seemed to notice me and made jokes with me while other adults usually paid me no heed. She was not like the other women for she had a job and went off to work every day. She was a sales assistant in the co-operative drapery store, and was always dressed in a closely-fitting suit, with a tight pencil skirt and shoes with thin, pointed heels. She had the blackest hair I had ever seen, and lips that were bright scarlet and shiny. I thought she was very beautiful.
Most of the other wives stayed at home, and there was sometimes a note of disapproval in their voices when they spoke about her. She was referred to as ‘That McAdam’, as if there was something not quite right about her.
Her husband, Hugh, was a baker and worked odd hours, leaving home before dawn and returning in the early afternoon, when he went straight to bed for a sleep. There were also two daughters, one a teenager still at secondary school, the other older and already employed in a lawyer's office. Mrs McAdam got back from her work about six o'clock, when Hugh had a meal ready and on the table. Then, every evening, he would go out to the pub.
This caused my mother to say, 'I don't know when they two ever get a chance to talk tae yin anither.' She announced this with a shake of the head and a strange expression that was a mystery to me. I had heard them talking lots of times.
Despite this, my mother and she seemed to get on fine, stopping to blether when they met in the close, and sharing much laughter. They would help each other out, fetching groceries from the shops, lending a cup of sugar or taking in the washing if the rain came on. So it was that, one day, for a reason that I cannot now recall, I was left in the care of Mrs McAdam - it was her half-day - while my mother went off on some errand of her own.
I had never been in her home before and I was delighted to find it quite different from ours. There were softer cushions than the ones we had, and there was a little scullery off the living room, with a cooker, a kitchen cabinet and a sink. Our sink was in the living room. Things seemed fancier at the McAdams'.
I do not remember much about how we passed the afternoon, except that it was pleasurable to be the sole focus of Mrs McAdam's attention. None of the rest of her family was present and I had her entirely to myself. Unlike my mother she did not busy herself with house work, but sat on the floor beside me while we played with toys that must have once belonged to her daughters. There was, I recall, a wooden Noah's Ark with pairs of brightly painted animals. The time drifted gently past.
Then, with no warning, she picked me up and carried me into the scullery.
'You need a wash,' she said, and began to undress me.
There was nothing particularly unusual in this. In my own house, I was washed every day, placed in the kitchen sink, standing in a basin of warm, soapy water, and rubbed all over with a flannel. But in Mrs McAdam's tiny scullery, there was a greater cosiness, as well as the exciting strangeness of being in an unfamiliar place.
Then, to my astonishment, she took off the blouse she was wearing, and stepped out of her pencil skirt, revealing a soft pink slip such as I had never before seen. It covered her body loosely, and was made from a fabric that seemed to shine.
'Don't want to get my good things all soapy water,' she explained, and set about washing me.
She used a sponge, an object unfamiliar to me, and soft on my skin. She did not scrub roughly as my mother did, but caressed me slowly and gently. To maintain my balance, I leaned towards her with my hands on her shoulders. They were warm and soft, and I remember still her smooth breasts moving beneath the slip, and the glimpses I was granted of her brown nipples.
Then she dried me with a fluffy towel - much softer than any of ours - wrapped me in it and carried me to a bed in a recess on the far side of the living room, where she tucked me, naked, under a quilt.
'Time for a sleep,' she whispered.
I remember nothing else about that day, but the wash in the scullery remains vivid in my memory. It still returns to unsettle me, as it has done time and again over the past sixty years.
Mrs McAdam did not live in our close for long after that. Listening in to adult conversations over ensuing years I learned that she had left her husband and two daughters to run off with someone my mother called 'her fancy man', a lingerie salesman who had visited the store where she worked. To the wives of our street, it was no more than could have been expected, and there was even a hint of delight in their voices when they spoke about her. Hugh and the girls were afforded much sympathy, though as far as I could see, their lives were hardly altered.
I did not fully understand all the conversations in hushed tones that followed her departure, but I was distraught when Mrs McAdam left. I missed the click of her heels on the flagged floor of the close, and her call of 'Hiya, pal' whenever she saw me. Not even the pictures I collected of parading Horse Guards or the new Queen’s golden coach could overcome my sense of loss. That distant afternoon remains as clear in my mind as if it happened only yesterday. Or at least, that is how I think I remember it.
About the Author
Gordon Gibson was born in Motherwell and now lives in Troon. After working in the steel industry, he trained as a primary school teacher and spent his working life in a variety of posts in education, from playgroup adviser to university lecturer.
Gordon always wanted to write, but never had the time to commit to it. When he retired, he decided to see how he would get on if he focused his efforts. Since having his first story published by McStorytellers in 2012, he has had work, both prose and poetry, accepted by a number of print and online journals.
Gordon always wanted to write, but never had the time to commit to it. When he retired, he decided to see how he would get on if he focused his efforts. Since having his first story published by McStorytellers in 2012, he has had work, both prose and poetry, accepted by a number of print and online journals.