Eighteen Couper Street Read online

  For my mother, Mary Steel McIntosh,

  whose life and times inspired this book

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story tells of one family’s life in Leith in the early twentieth century. Although it echoes some of the writer’s experiences and personal feelings, the characters portrayed in the book are wholly fictitious and bear no relation to any persons, living or dead. Many of the street names, localities and other details from that period in Leith’s history have been preserved however.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Gill Marple, Leith Library Librarian; Noel Cochrane, Leith Storyteller; and Celia Baird, a true Leither, for your assistance in researching for this book. Special thanks also goes to Mary Gillon and Gordon Booth for your general assistance and encouragement. And finally, thank you to Kristen Susienka at Black & White Publishing for your meticulous editing skills.

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  1 Goodbye, My Friend

  2 Keeping Rachel

  3 Tragedy

  4 Winning and Losing

  5 The Headmaster

  6 Resentment

  7 Changing Times

  8 A Stranger Comes Ashore

  9 Two Months Gone and Still No Sign of Him

  10 Gus

  11 A Year Later

  12 Turning Point

  13 Eugenie Fraser

  14 Spanish Flu

  15 Away Home

  16 The Amalgamation

  17 The Unanswered Question

  18 The Jeanie Wilson

  19 Dancing Up A Storm

  20 Mistakes Made Right

  21 An Unlikely Proposal

  22 The Wise Women

  Also Available by Millie Gray

  Copyright

  1

  GOODBYE, MY FRIEND

  Reluctantly releasing the hand of her friend who was lying in the hospital bed, Anna rose quickly and grabbed the coat sleeve of the retreating minister. “Please, please,” she begged. “Just wait another half hour. He will come. He said he would. He just has to!”

  The Reverend Hamilton shook his head in resignation. “You said that yesterday and the day before.” He now looked down at the semi-conscious woman whose laboured breathing confirmed his thoughts that if Gabriel Forbes did not put in an appearance tonight there would be no requirement to come tomorrow. His attention now turned to the diminutive woman tugging insistently on his sleeve and he was moved to pity. “Look,” he said, firmly removing Anna’s hand from his jacket. “I have two other wards to visit before I leave but I can, and will, come back in half an hour. But if the ne’er-do-weel hasn’t put in an appearance by then I will have to leave.”

  Anna sighed and nodded with relief. It was vital to herself that her friend Norma, who was now close to death, should be married so that she might meet her God without the heavy burden of having to beg His forgiveness for having mothered three children out of wedlock. Throughout her life Anna had believed that the good outweighed the bad. She now smiled, thinking how great an advantage it would be for Norma to be married tonight and yet not survive to live in holy but acrimonious wedlock with a waster like Gabby Forbes.

  Anna had just decided to leave the ward and make her way to the entrance of the Leith Poorhouse and Hospital for the Sick, which had been opened just a year earlier in 1907, when she became aware that one of the Poorhouse inmates, who was judged well enough to work, had come behind the screens and was pouring the plateful of thin gruel-like soup that had been left to feed Norma into an old tin can. Anna’s look of disgust had the thin bedraggled woman mutter, “She’s no gonnae eat it, is she?” Anna nodded in agreement. “So I’m just as well tae hae it.” The woman then lifted the tin mug to her lips and gulped down its contents.

  Looking around her surroundings, Anna shook her head. “Have you been here since this … palace for the destitute opened last year?”

  The woman sniffed as she ran her hand over her shaven head, which Anna knew would always be kept shorn so that there might be some control of the head lice that thrived in that charitable environment. “Aye. Me and my auld man were ordered in here last year.” She sighed and shook her head. “And d’you ken? Husbands and wives are kept separate …” Sniffing as a sly smirk crossed her face, she continued confidentially, “But they do let me see him on a Sunday afternoon. And mind ye this,” she continued with a cheery cackle, “getting this wee job gathering up the dishes in aw they wards here, with so many aboot to meet their Maker …” and she gave a quick look about “… means am gettin’ right well fed. Might even get a bit fatter and I could get oot o’ here.” She hesitated and looked furtively about her before whispering, “And get a wee place near the docks for just my Tam and me.”

  Anna smiled woefully, thinking that if the poor soul considered she was fat now what on earth did she look like before she was ordered in here?

  A movement from the bed and a flicker of Norma’s eyelids reminded Anna that she should be out looking for Gabby and dragging him to Norma’s bedside.

  Making her way to leave the long, bleak ward that was never free from the wheezing and gasping of its residents, Anna offered up a silent prayer that Gabby might come.

  Flying down the stone stairs, bordered by their cold, soulless iron railings, she was dismayed to find the entrance deserted.

  Standing outside the doorway she glanced up at the substantial stone plaque that was carved with the Leith coat of arms. Anna smiled to herself as she thought, Oh aye, the people of Leith are so proud of their new Poorhouse. Our betters tell us, they do, that this place is such an improvement on the two that were closed down after being deemed unfit for human habitation. Shaking her head in resignation, she asked herself, “Why should people whose only crime is to be born poor be sentenced to imprisonment inside these walls and hidden away from the world so the wealthy don’t have to believe anything other than that the inmates, securely locked behind tall imposing gates, are being suitably looked after?”

  Raising her voice, she shouted towards the coat of arms, “Believe me, you sanctimonious bible-bashers that congregated here to open this establishment, if I have only one wish left in this world then I would use it to ask that this,” she now spread her hands wide so that they included the whole frontage, “is the last such degrading institution to be built in the whole of Scotland.” Little did Anna know then that her wish would most certainly be granted.

  “Right,” she continued. “Time to look for a reluctant bridegroom.”

  She turned and began to struggle down the glaur-sodden road towards the over-high gates and was about to slink past the mortuary building when she became aware of the unmistakable voice of a drunken Gabby singing tremulously:

  “Come leave yer hoose in Couper Street,

  And flit to Sunshine Square,

  That’s the place where merciful b-l-o-o-o-o-d-y Jesus lives

  And all are happy there.”

  He paused as his rasping smoker’s cough engulfed him. Once the spasm abated he spat out, to Anna’s disgust, the dislodged phlegm, which landed on his jacket sleeve. Not bothering to wipe away the mucus, he continued:

  “Call the boys, call the boys,

  Call the B-O-Y-S.

  And to the girls,

  C-O-M-E, and be stupid enough,

  To T-R-U-S-T in Him

  To make them H-A-P-P-Y!”

  “That’s blasphemy, you drunken sod,” hissed Anna as she pulled him from the wall and began to steer him towards the main hospital building, even though he was reeking of alcohol and pipe smoke.

  Right there and then she was ready to give him a right sherracking but had to bite her to
ngue since she didn’t wish to give him any excuse to turn on his heel and so leave Norma unwed.

  Entering the ward, Anna and Gabby made a bizarre pair. Gabby, as instructed by Anna, was dressed in his threadbare Sunday best. The suit had seen too many years of wear and showed unmistakable signs of its owner having rolled over the ground on numerous drunken occasions. Nevertheless, Gabby was still a handsome man, even although his blonde curls were now unruly and lay like a thatch on top of his head. For those like Anna who had known him for years, his bonny face was clearly beginning to show the results of a decadent lifestyle. Careful scrutiny revealed that his Roman nose was beginning to turn mottled and pockmarked. His saving grace was his most attractive feature – his two bright-blue twinkling eyes. Those eyes had immediately enchanted Norma and unfortunately still had the capacity to beguile.

  On the other hand, when you looked at Anna you were faced with a perfect lady who had all the grace and demeanour of a duchess. Her appearance was enhanced by being dressed in a long smart black coat and a wide-brimmed hat – the now superfluous clothes of a woman she had recently laid out for burial. However because she was small and comely, when she entered the ward it seemed as though she were on skates. And no one would have suspected that she was now forced to dwell at 18 Couper Street – a slum tenement that had been knocked up from heaps of rubble that weren’t good enough for toffs’ housing. Moreover, numerous families lived there and, unlike Admiralty Street, lacked the luxury of a lavatory on each landing for the sole use of only forty people. In Couper Street they had only one lavatory at the rear of the ground floor, albeit for the exclusive use of eighteen families.

  Gabby dutifully followed Anna towards the screened-off bed. The Reverend Hamilton was already there and as soon as Gabby had taken his place at Norma’s bedside he began the wedding ceremony.

  Anna never heard a word of the vows made by Gabby, too drunk to stand, or by Norma, too weak to sit up. She did witness Norma’s nod of consent and the cross she made on the certificate when it was put in front of her, but in reality her thoughts had drifted back to the time when she had first met Norma.

  The single-end house opposite her on the first landing of 18 Couper Street had become vacant after old Annie Thom died and her body was being removed for a pauper’s burial when Norma, one of the few Jewish women Anna had ever met, had arrived, along with Gabby. Anna acknowledged that there was something unusual that attracted her to Norma. It wasn’t just her bonny face, framed by a mass of golden red-tinted hair, nor her large blue eyes that seemed to mesmerise you. No, it was her grace and her innate intelligence.

  Anna realised immediately that Norma, like herself, had known a better life. It was also evident that because of their identical hair colouring Gabby and Norma could have passed for brother and sister. Anna had also noted – if she judged correctly – that their first child would be born in the next two months. Freddie did arrive as Anna had predicted and a year later he was big brother to Robert. A smile came to Anna’s lips as she remembered how, two and a half years ago and to everyone’s delight, Norma gave birth to her beloved daughter, Rachel – poor little Rachel who was now in the charitable care of the Poorhouse. Anna gave an involuntary shiver at the thought but she argued she had been quite unable to take on the care of the toddler.

  Her eyes pleaded as she looked up at the green painted wall. “Oh,” she wailed inwardly, “Norma, please try to understand that because I had just taken on looking after my brother Willie’s three motherless bairns and wanting to do my best to nurse you,” she sighed, “until you were admitted here, I just couldn’t.” Then she might have added, “And if Gabby hadn’t done what he was now expert at, and abdicated all responsibility – which meant I also had to keep an eye on Freddie and Robert as well – I just might have managed something.”

  Anna was unaware that a full half hour had passed since she started reminiscing until she heard a voice say, “You’ll need to go now so we can get her ready for the paupers.” A pitiful cry escaped her when she realised that Norma had passed away and that the minister was long gone.

  Rising slowly Anna went over to speak to Norma’s lifeless body. Important it was that she should vow yet again to Norma that she would go and rescue Rachel from the clutches of the Poorhouse just as soon as she was able. She cried out, however, on stumbling over an obstacle, which proved to be Gabby who had slipped off his chair and was now lying in a drunken stupor on the floor.

  As her tears flowed freely, she mumbled to the nurse, “No need for you to wash her. I’ll do it. I’ve done so many in my time. So please let me do this last service for her.”

  The assistant huffed before answering, “Maybe so. But ye’d be a greater help to us, and her, if you’d get,” she now viciously kicked out at Gabby, “this drunken midden up on his feet and out o’ here!”

  2

  KEEPING RACHEL

  “Och, Auntie, why can I no chum ye?” wailed Bella. Anna made no answer. “Ye ken fine how I’ve been longing for you to go and fetch wee Rachel so I can have a wee sister.”

  “More’s the pity that it’s her that was left in the hoose for bairns that naebudy wants when it could have been you,” snorted Rab, who was standing close to his brother Jimmy.

  “Aye, and what I would like to ken, Auntie, is why you’re no taking in her brothers who are more in need o’ somebody to be looking after them?” grumbled Jimmy, who was emboldened by the closeness of his brother.

  Her face now purple with rage at her nephews’ audacity in highlighting her shortcomings, Anna made a lunge towards them but the two boys parted like the Red Sea and escaped out of her reach. “That’s enough from the pair of you. Gabby is the father of those laddies,” Anna hotly defended, “so I couldn’t have them even if I was able to take on another two as hapless as you pair!”

  Sitting her ample bottom down on the fender stool, which allowed the heat from the fire to relax her spine and shoulders, Anna cast her mind back to six years ago in 1905 when her brother Willie’s wife, Elsie, had died and left him with three bairns to look after – Bella, who had been going on seven that year; and the laddies, Rab and Jimmy, who were then eight and seven years old. She hesitated as she confided to herself, “No decent space between them. An all too short ten months was all that separated the three of them.” Her face was now redder than the fire flames. She wanted to believe Elsie, her sister-in-law, was no better than a wanton woman but she had, after all, been a daughter of the manse and it was so wrong to talk ill of the dead – unless of course, she counter-argued, if that louse Gabby was to do her a favour and die, then telling the truth and saying how useless he had been would be permissible.

  Tutting, she conceded that if she couldn’t blame Elsie she had no alternative but to blame her seafaring brother Willie who, like herself, had been brought up strict Brethren (and therefore should have prayed ardently for strength to control his urges) for these indecent intervals. Anna seemed unable to make allowances for the fact that Jimmy, a puny four-and-a-half-pound baby, was born two months premature – just as Bella had been. Anna had also to admit that her brother Willie’s inability to deny himself the pleasures of the flesh was probably the reason why, within three months of Elsie’s going and his dumping the three children on her, he was shacked up with another floosie in Glasgow. That lassie had immediately obliged him by producing another two offspring – which meant he never had so much as a farthing to send on for Bella, Rab and Jimmy’s keep.

  Checking that her immaculate hair was tightly imprisoned within its grips, she slowly rose to her feet and admitted to herself that all was not lost, for in ten months’ time Jimmy would leave school and then he and Rab would apply to be cabin boys on one of the big liners.

  Anna’s smile was now so broad that it stretched from ear to ear. Andy, her elder brother who was married to an Irish lassie, Rosie, lived just around the corner in Admiralty Street. He, like Willie, was a stoker on the steamboats, but unlike Willie, Andy was strictly teetotal and nev
er ended up legless in the Steamboat pub just outside the Leith docks. Oh yes, Andy might well have married a dim-like lassie from a strange unholy faith – Roman Catholic, angular Rosie was – but he was still a good, upright and honest Christian man, a credit to the Brethren and their strict ways. His being such a good man was the reason he took such an interest in both of his brother’s boys and was steering them on the right course – a good life at sea.

  “Lads,” he had said wisely to the boys, “stick in at school and then gang to sea. Oh aye, there’s no better life for a man than the one at sea. And you two could get yourselves onto the big liners as cabin boys and work yourselves up.” Andy had nodded sagely before continuing, “And now that the likes o’ me and my mates demanding better conditions for the men at sea, you’ll be getting in at the right time and you could even end up captain o’ one o’ the Cunards.”

  This lecture had inspired the boys and nothing else would do until they could both go off together and join a ship. Rab had always looked after Jimmy – a puny wee soul but with a big heart. This meant that when Rab was old enough to go off to sea he had refused to go until Jimmy could accompany him. Not having a lazy bone in his body Rab had marked time by taking on a message boy’s job at Binnie the butcher’s on Great Junction Street. That job had its compensation: only last night hadn’t Rab been given a sheep’s bag with a big dollop of ruddican thrown in? True, he had only been given the tripe because it was so filthy that no one would buy it – oh aye, even the poor had their standards – and Anna had stood for hours cleaning the green glaur from it and it had now been simmering slowly for eight hours in some water and onions. And within half an hour potatoes and milk would be added and a feast no king could reject would soon be theirs.

  Anna grimaced as she donned her black coat and straw hat. She hoped the odour of the cooking tripe wouldn’t linger on her clothes. Chuckling, she muttered to herself, “So what? It just might be more acceptable than the stink of mouldy mothballs.”