The memoir is richly detailed with descriptions of domestic chores, seasonal rhythms, village traditions, and local characters, offering a rare window into a now-vanished way of life. Capell’s writing is both humorous and poignant, grounded in memory yet colored by affection and insight. Through her eyes, the landscape, people, and routines of Heiton come to life, portraying not only a personal history but also a valuable cultural record of early 20th-century rural Scotland.
ELLA CAPELL was born in 1920, into a family of tailors in the village of Heiton. Penned to celebrate her 100 birthday, this is her fascinating story of growing up in and around the village. Reference is also made to the “Mickeydoozler” that IAN ABERNETHY referred to in his Affleck story.
The little stone house at the end of the row still stands, impervious to the years and the weather, bought for seventy-five pounds before I was born in 1920. My first memory is having my picture taken in the front garden of my Grannie’s house, two houses along from ours in the row. I recall putting on “my silk yin”, and having my straight Dutch-bobbed hair brushed, and leaning on Grannie’s knee, took the head of a marguerite off in my hand. Grannie was clad in a black, long-sleeved, long-skirted dress, with a black apron covering the bodice and skirt. Her hair was straight, mostly grey and scraped back into a sensible bun. She was my refuge against all-comers, and smoked a white clay pipe for comfort. I was the baby of the family by eight years, spoiled, cosseted and buffeted by all: sent on endless messages and fool’s errands by many uncles and aunts. My Dad and uncles were great growers of sweet peas, roses, and vegetables for table use and for the Flower Shows. These shows took place during the week, usually in places so far flung as Hawick, Kelso, Melrose and even Edinburgh. The Affleck sweet peas grown on rows of chicken manure from Uncle Alex’s birds, swept the board. The roses were full, fair and fragrant, and the parsnips were a yard long. One Sunday morning, the day before a show, I picked a red rose from the garden, stabbed a pin through the stem, and fixed it to my dress to wear to Sunday school. Next thing I knew, my Uncle Jimmy was chasing me down the path, shouting “Ye wee besom!” and brandishing an axe. He had been splitting some kindling for the stove in the tailor shop, when he spotted me with their prize ‘Best Red Rose in the Show’ specimen. I ran for my Grannie, who threw her black apron over my head to hide me from the wrath of the Head Gardener.
Flowers were important in my life even then. I won a prize in the Heiton Flower Show for a basket of wild flowers, still bright in memory. Jam jars held water in the basket and moss hid the mechanics so little Ella won a prize of several shillings. The midden in the back garden provided a handy garbage dump, and became good fertilizer in a short time. I was sent out with all kitchen peelings and egg shells to add to the heap.
My mother was a “Townswoman from Perth” to quote my vitriolic Aunt Liz. Mother quickly became a gatherer and a gleaner to pad out our meals from a meagre household allowance. Hard times were upon us in the nineteen twenties, and the tailoring business was bad. Factory-made clothing became plentiful and cheap after the war, and the Affleck firm suffering. Mother made jam and jelly from anything that grew on the ground, bushes or trees. Elderberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, black, red and white currants, plums and greengages, all were picked and turned into jams and jellies. She had a huge black kettle lined with copper, which went with us to Canada and was in use until Nan moved to a small apartment and had no room for it. Field mushrooms were plentiful in spring and autumn, and family outings went to the “Broomie Knowe” to fill a huge wicker clothes basket with mushrooms to be fried in butter until we could eat no more. Rabbits were plentiful. Cousin Robin was a gamekeeper who kept us supplied with these with the help of a dreadful smelly ferret with red eyes, who was run into a rabbit hole. Out came the poor rabbit at the other end into Robin’s bag. One whack with a stick and it was dinner. Salmon, grayling and trout flowed in the door from forays to the Tweed and Teviot by my Dad and uncles, who beat the water regularly with the wet and dry flies tied by Aunt Liz, who made her living from this art. She always had an air of beeswax and eucalyptus about her. Her hair was tied up in a scarf and, with her sallow complexion, she had a gypsy appearance. She was filled with envy of my mother’s fair hair and complexion and gave mother the edge of her tongue every chance she got. Then she would go about singing (beautifully) “Danny Boy” holding the high notes as long as she could. I recall her sitting at a table hunched over a collection of bright feathers from Alex’s fancy birds, beads, fur and wicked wee hooks. Her fingers flew and Royal Coachmen with spotted green bodies and white wings appeared as though by magic.
The waters and woodlands were poached upon by the villagers when the need arose. I remember vividly the one rabbit hunt I was taken to by Uncle Alex and not with Mother’s permission. Farmer Cavers had a field to be mowed, and around and around went the machine from the outside in. The rabbits were driven into the standing grain in the centre, and the hunters converged with sticks, to fell the rabbits by the dozen. Every house was supplied by the overflow, and the smell of hare soup followed the skinning and hanging of the victims of the hunt. One of Cavers’ turnips, our own carrots, onions and potatoes went into our pot, and at the last, some hard dried peas, soaked overnight. I always lined up the peas around the rim of the soup plate to eat last. This soup and a steamed pudding made in a Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin made a hearty meal. Mother’s girdle scones were famous – heavy, damp and spotted with currants. She was the envy of the village with her American oil stove in the pantry. Most village houses had a wood or coal range or used the kitchen fire-place and the cleek in it to hang a pot. There were always plenty of vegetables from the garden, or the pit in winter. The butcher’s van came once a week with sausages, mutton, liver and soup bones. There was a baker’s van as well, with bread, cakes and biscuits sent from Kelso. There was no electricity, running water inside the house, no bathroom, inside toilet, no telephone, car or radio. Coal-oil lamps lit the rooms, the globes cleaned with newspapers, the wicks trimmed and kerosene smells filling the house after dark. There was the “sprigget” outside our house, bearing water from the hills, clear and drinkable and a rain barrel outside the wash-house at the back door. A little shed held a coal or wood stove with a big copper boiler on top. Water was carried from the barrel or the sprigget and heated on the stove, ‘Sunlight’ soap grated into the water and the white things boiled, run through the hand-turned mangle into the tub of rinse water. The clothes were mangled again and hung on rope lines held up by clothes props to keep the sheets out of the blackcurrant bushes. That night or the next day, sad-irons were heated on the stove and rushed into the house to iron the sheets spread on the kitchen table. Mother washed for our family of five, and various neighbours in need, as well as a lot of clothes from Grannie’s house. I got to hand her the clothes pegs as she hung the laundry on the lines and was put in charge of watching the sky for rain. I was set to picking the ripe currants and shelling peas and broad beans in season.
On Saturday night, the tin bath was brought out and put in front of the kitchen fire and partly filled with heated water. One at a time, we were shampooed with ‘Sunlight’ soap and immersed in the bath, from the cleanest to the dirtiest, a clean jug of water poured over, just before stepping out. Other days, a ewer of water and a basin in the bedroom, and a scour with a good flannel were the extent of the amenities. Down the garden was the ‘wee hoose’ with two seats cut out of the boards. On the wall was a nail with square sheets cut out of the Kelso Chronicle – a crisp bond with very black ink. The door had some holes cut out for ventilation and the floor had a piece of linoleum over the earth.
At night and on the coldest days, there were china chamber pots in the bedrooms, hidden in a commode cupboard, and kept scalded with water boiled in the kettle. The drinking water was in a covered jug in the pantry or in the kettle used for tea. The bath water was emptied into the garden or put into pails to wash the floors and stairs. No wonder Mother died at sixty-eight, worn out from hard work. I remember her tired face and her hands wrinkled and sore from scrubbing clothes on the washboard.
Candles were made with paraffin wax and butcher’s string, dipped over and over until fat enough. Soap was made of saved bacon fat and meat suet combined with wood ashes and poured into a long wooden oiled box to harden. It was then cut into pieces with a wire and, when grated into the wash boiler, made a grand bleaching agent. Sheets and shirts were snow-white and smelled like fresh air. Clothing was made from other clothing, a small coat cut from a larger one, the material turned out to the other side and the pieces used to make another garment. Buttons were kept for years, as were snap fasteners and hooks and eyes carefully cut off a worn-out skirt. One of my Dad’s buttonholes contained dozens of hand-laid stitches of button-hole twist in a perfect row with a grand round eye at one end to go over a big button.
One of the scourges of society was head-lice, endemic in the school and controlled at home with a fine-tooth comb, and a liberal dousing with coal-oil. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the fire with my head on a newspaper covering Mother’s lap. She was wielding the fine-tooth comb, then flicking the paper into the fire to burn the wee beasties. Pin-worms were also a problem, and the cure for that was a lozenge covered with sugar which had a quick and devastating result. I enjoyed eating the tablet, as it was flavoured with liquorice, and was quite a pleasant treat. I never connected the tablet with the result. Colds were treated with a cup of hot water with a tablespoon of blackcurrant jam stirred into it. A chest cold called for a layer of goose grease rubbed on the chest and covered with a warm flannel. A mustard plaster was for bronchitis, with first a layer of goose grease to protect the skin. I suffered from swollen glands in the neck, quite frequently, and was treated with ‘Zambuck’, covered with a woollen stocking held with a big safety pin. It must have done the trick. Our beds were warmed with a hot-water bottle or a stone jug called a pig. This had a big cork in it and leaked frequently. It was a grand comfort to put the feet on the warm stone bottle instead of the icy, damp sheets.
Bicycles were the main form of transport and one walked everywhere for miles and miles, with no hope of getting any further from home than legs could carry. In an emergency, a ride in the butcher’s or baker’s van could carry somebody for the doctor in Kelso. My mother delivered many village babies herself, while the husband cycled to Dr. Davidson’s house to rouse him from a sound sleep. Dr. Davidson had a car to get around the county but, as there were no telephones in the village, the bicycle was the only means at hand to the messenger. Nan and I were born in the downstairs bedroom of the wee stone house, with Dr. Davidson in attendance, with chloroform dropped on a sieve covered with a hankie.
My earliest memory was when I was two. Madge, aged sixteen past, was in bed at death’s door with a bad case of measles. I remember climbing into bed with her and she was too weak to push me out. Mother found me there, so I was washed all over, and it not Saturday, and dried with a rough towel. I never did get the measles, not to this day, although Aunt Lizzie put pencil dots on my hands and wrists the next week. I ran into the tailor shop shouting: “Ella’s got the measles!” hoping for a peppermint from the paper bag in the machine drawer.
My Dad and uncles sat cross-legged on the board, sewing away by hand, the irons on the coal stove. There was a pressing board, a treadle sewing machine and the smell of damp rags pervading the air. The shop was a haven of comfort and amusement for me – I learned songs there and heard stories about the tramps: Bet the Boar, Hawick Wattie and Jethart Wull. I remember being fitted for a short brown wool pleated skirt, and a dark blue tunic for school. Mother knitted a jersey, knee socks and a hat of fawn wool to wear with the skirt. Her needles were never empty and wool socks flowed from them in a constant stream. She even made ‘costumes’ for herself – a knitted jersey and skirt done on a circular needle. Cardigans and jerseys were produced in quantity, the wool coming from the mills in Hawick in large hanks. I was set to holding them on outstretched arms, swaying back and forth as Mother or Nan wound the wool on to manageable balls. I learned to do this alone, early on, by putting the hank around a chair back and running around the chair while winding the wool into a ball. Better than television.
We played cards at the kitchen table, and Ludo, a game with a board, coloured counters and dice. There were no toys I can think of except Nan’s doll, a beautiful creature with dark hair, composition legs and arms, a pretty porcelain face and round staring glass eyes. Nan’s friend, Jean Biggar, had a new doll as well, so off the two of them went to the tailor shop to be given help to choose the fanciest names possible. The sharp-witted uncles proposed ‘Effluvia Affleck’ and ‘Scented Lily Biggar’, and so the dolls became. When mother got wind of it, Effluvia was swiftly rechristened ‘Jeanette’. I had my picture taken with her at the age of three, I in my hand-knit clothes and Jeanette in a muslin frock.
Nan took me to Sunday school held at Heiton Hall, the site of most of Heiton’s social gatherings. Whist drives and dances, and Christmas parties complete with Santy Claus, who had a heavy Scots accent and who wore an unconvincing white ‘baird’, as it was said, made of cotton wool. The flower show was held there and the water supply for the specimens was pails of water brought from the communal tap or the rain barrel. My first day of school was in September, 1924 when I was not quite four. Mother was in Edinburgh for surgery, and as Dad was on the school board, I was let into the Little End while she was away. I did so well that, after Mother came home, I was allowed to stay on. Slates and slate pencils were used and a grey smelly rag, kept in a Zambuck tin, was used to erase the lesson beforehand. This developed a good memory, as there were no notebooks to record past lessons. Desks were in a long row, lidded and ink-stained, and several grades were taught in the same room. The Big End was for children past the primary stage, and was taught by the fearsome Miss Isabella Davidson. This formidable lady wielded a horse’s belly-band with vigour, to keep the huge fourteen year-old farm laddies in line. Anyone stepping over her idea of bounds of good behaviour got a leathering. This was from my point of view. She probably had to defend herself from some of these boys who had to keep in school until the age of fourteen. They were often absent during harvest season, and in spring ploughing, so their education was probably rather spotty. Dad left at 14 to take up his tailoring apprenticeship in his father’s business in the Heiton tailoring shop. This was for a seven year stretch.
At least he had a good trade which he practised until he lost his eyesight to cataract at the age of eighty. The bathroom facilities at Heiton school were outside in the schoolyard, a dismal two-ended shed, for boys and girls. Togetherness. Squares of Kelso Chronicle were on a handy nail and it was kept quite tidy with applications of lime. A pail of drinking water stood at the door with a dipper for all to use. At leevee time we had a jeely piece and a sup of water from the pail, and played stot-ba or bools or ring-a-leevee-o depending on the season. My friend, Tibbie Moffat, who lived next door to Cavers was my playmate. Bools were clay marbles and Aggies were fancy and expensive ones of coloured glass with grand swirls of colour in the middle. I had a wee bag of the clay ones, and added to them with a good aim for my age.
We were catapulted into learning on the first day, none of this printing or bead-stringing or pasting bits of coloured paper. We were down to the real thing, and the first lesson was writing the letter ‘S’, as the teacher, Miss Gardiner said, like a dog curled up in the SSSSun. There was nothing to show for the lesson, as the esses had to be rubbed out to make room for the next lesson of arithmetic, with the accent on the second syllable. I was reading by December and able to add fairly well. By the age of seven, I was promoted to the Big End with the fearsome Miss Davidson. Fortunately, we left Heiton in March so my tenure was short. Miss Davidson came to visit us in Canada some years later and suddenly became a friendly, gentle person interested in our welfare and eager to see old friends.
Nan went on to Kelso High School, as she and Mable Dodds came first equal on the entrance examination. Madge had gone on to Edinburgh University on a bursary so I saw little of her in my early years. Jim worked as a plumber’s helper for a time until he saw the need for a higher education. He and Madge ended up in the United States at Carnegie Tech. Madge graduating with a B.Sc. degree to add to her Edinburgh Masters, and Jim with a B.Sc. degree with a geophysical major. Not bad for a couple of village kids. Jim had a collection of birds’ eggs in a glass case in his room which he had collected around the countryside. I was warned on pain of death not to go near the case or handle the eggs. They were of all sizes and colours, spotted and freckled and plain. He had harried many a nest to attain this gathering of some poor bird’s spring nest. I wonder what happened to them – I don’t remember. Jim shot a fox locally, and it was made into a neckpiece for Madge. It had long legs, one of them grasped in a clip in the fox’s mouth and the rest dangling about as she walked. It had a grand bushy tail and a pair of glittering yellow glass eyes. She looked ‘fair like a queen’ when dressed in it.
Sometimes, our village was visited by the gypsies, a band of Romany people allowed to camp on the outskirts of an estate nearby. They were tinkers and horse-traders mostly, and the women sold wares of their own making, like heather pot scrubbers and walking sticks whittled from hardwood branches. I remember one day of heavy rain, seeing a gypsy man at our kitchen table, lashing into a plate of Mother’s kale, dipping a piece of bread into the soup and shivering in his wet clothes. Mother had brought him in to have a warm by the fire and couldn’t send him away hungry. The gypsy caravans were seen on the village road, with the women and children walking beside them and the horses being led by the bridle down the road. We were always warned about tramps and gypsies, but they seemed a peaceable lot to me. More fearsome by far were the ‘Guisers’ – local lads with their faces blackened with grease and lamp black, who came to the door reciting: “Here I am Galoshen, Galoshen is my name – with a sword and pistol by my side” – the end escapes me. The band was given small bits of money or a bite of shortbread. It was like the present-day Hallowe’en trick or treating, except they did this recitation for reward.
Sunday school was in Heiton Ha’ and our church was in Roxburgh where my Dad led the choir. That meant that he started the singing and directed the congregation by having the loudest voice. In between hymns, he rattled a paper bag in his pocket loudly and long, finally producing a humbug to keep his throat clear for the next assault on the hymnal. He shifted the humbug around in his mouth and made a fine rattle to distract us from the sermon. After the service, a social half-hour was held in the kirkyard, and invitations to tea were issued by Roxburgh friends. Mother’s friend, Mrs Espey, lived near the church up a little rise of land. You could see the goldenrod in her garden if you looked out of the church window. Often, tea and scones were enjoyed there before our walk home through the fields and past Sunlaws. We walked everywhere as a family, and enjoyed looking for wild flowers and birds’ nests, and always picked up bits of dry sticks to take home for the fire. Uncle Alex took me on long rambles, spotting nests and making up names for the birds like ‘protoplasm’ and ‘mickeydoozler’, whence came the name I gave him – ‘Uncle Mickey’. In spring, the hedges were mad with birds, and everywhere grew forget-me-nots, celandines and violets, ferns and broom, and later on the heather and bracken. A hedge of briar roses grew beside Roxburgh station, whose wee pink buds had a heavenly fragrance. Laburnum hung over the road near Sunlaws in long golden chains, and rhododendron grew along the railway line in great profusion. In spring, a solid carpet of daffodils bloomed under the ancient beech trees of Sunlaws, the heavy branches coming down to the ground to make a grand place for climbing. In February, snowdrops were up in the currant bushes and, in December, holly berries glowed in the wooded areas and were cut and brought in for Christmas and the New Year. Robins stayed all winter and could be seen flashing in and out of the dark woods.
Christmas at Sunlaws was an event held for the children of the village: I don’t remember how often this was, only the one great shining moment of which I was part. Sunlaws was the estate of General and Lady Scott-Kerr which stood a few hundred yards from the village of Heiton. Following a fire, in had been rebuilt about 1815. It was a huge stone building with many gables, a central tower and a good dozen chimney pots. There was a large conservatory at one end and a wide bay window in the great hall. It was this window that met the eye on entering the house. There stood a huge evergreen tree, glittering with silver and coloured balls, hung with quivering tinsel, and real candles lit on the ends of the branches. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Under the tree was a gift for each child, and a bag of sweets and an orange – a rare treat – to take home. I was standing transfixed in front of the tree looking in wonder at the glitter and splendour. Lady Scott-Kerr approached and asked what I wanted from the tree, and I pointed a shaking finger at a big silver ball – part of the decorations. She sent for a footman who brought a little ladder, removed the ball and put it in my hand wrapped in tissue paper. There it was. I stared into it well into the night by the light of a lamp, seeing my face broad and distorted, half-way into fairyland. It must have been left in Scotland when we moved to Canada, or I would have it yet.
The Spittal trip was the great excitement of the year when the members of the Sunday school went from Roxburgh by train to the sea coast, where we rolled up our skirts and ‘dooked’ bare-legged in the Arctic water. We had gone about the village the week before, reciting poems or singing a song to earn bits of money from various relatives. The once I went to Spittal, I had the sum of sixpence in my pocket, and part of the day’s treat was to visit F.W. Woolworth. The glories displayed there were so hard to choose from and, after an agonising half-hour, I picked out a gimcrackery tennis racquet. There was no money left for a ball or a second racquet and nobody had a net so, after everyone at home had had a good laugh, little Ella posed with the racquet in front of an upstairs mirror, imitating a film star she had seen in a picture at the Kelso Corn Exchange. There wasn’t much resemblance to the film star, but it put the racquet to good use. These films were shown on rare occasions and, for the entry fee of a penny, we got to sit on a hard bench and be treated to such epics as: “The Man from Toronto”, who wore a cowboy hat and boots and spat on the floor. After we arrived in Toronto, there was nothing to resemble this scenario, and I was bitterly disappointed.
The post office was run by Mrs Waldie who kept a supply of ‘pirns’ of thread and other sewing sundries. There were clear glass jars of ‘sweeties’ – tablet, gundy, toffees and humbugs, also a large bottle of hard round peppermints which cured my Aunt Bess’ ‘sair side’, Uncle Danny’s shortness of breath, Uncle Mickey’s smokers’ cough and my Dad’s Sunday singing voice. I was dispatched for a wee bag of these comforts, usually in thripenny lots as money was scarce. I was always given one for my trouble. Sometimes, a man on a bicycle came to the post office for directions to deliver a telegram – always with dire news. One came to our house one day telling of my Grandfather Sidey’s death in Perth. I was the envy of all at Heiton school, being in a house which had been sent a telegram. It was all over the village in an hour.
A dreadful memory rears its head – the day a pig was slaughtered at Cavers’ farm. The morning was hideous with screams as the pig ran about the farm yard with its throat cut, until it bled out and fell down over its front legs. It was raised on a hoist by its hind legs to a great hook on the door, disembowelled and singed all over with a burning brand to remove the hair. It was scalded and scraped and butchered in short order. Tibbie and I stared in fascinated horror, keeking around the vennel at the carnage. Smells of blood and entrails and burning hair added to the nightmare. Why we were allowed to watch makes one wonder. Later in the week, mealie pudding, black pudding arrived at the door, and slabs of suet to be rendered into fat. Sausages were brought sometimes, and the smell of them sizzling in the pan did little to dispel the frightful sights. Who needed horror films when reality was on the very doorstep?
Sometimes, farmer Cavers took Tibbie and me out on the bogie to gather in the hay. We took a jeely-piece and a bottle of cold sugared tea in a corked Camp coffee bottle. We waited for the bogie to come home at dinner time, and so enjoyed a day’s outing in the field a few hundred yards behind the house. Once, Mother woke me in the night and, wrapped in a blanket, I was taken out to witness Cavers’ hay barn going up in flames. The horses had been brought out screaming in terror, their heads wrapped up in sacks. Pigs ran loose in the yard in hysterics, and chickens squatted, stunned with fright on the cobblestones. It looked like the end of the world and, of course, there was no water or fire department – just a barn full of hay and one cow going up in smoke and flames. The barn was rebuilt before the winter but all the hay was lost.
We always kept chickens in the back garden – Leghorns and Anconas – and stupid Indian Runner ducks who produced huge bluish eggs for the table. Sometimes, I was sent to find the eggs, and had to lift the setting hen from the nest and feel underneath her to see if there was an egg there. Broody hens found all sorts of places to hide their clutch of eggs and were pretty belligerent about having a wee hand rousting her from her nest. I was given strict orders not to disturb the ‘broodies’, but sometimes added to my basket from these poor birds’ bairns. I wrapped my hand in a cloth to protect it from the stabbing beaks and was upset when an egg cracked into the pan contained a half-formed chick. My Mother took to ‘candling’ the eggs I brought in after one or two incidents like this. Duck eggs were easy to get, as the silly things ran away, abandoning nest and eggs. Uncle Alex’s beautiful aviary was a source of great interest to me. Golden pheasants, silkies with black flesh and white feathers, bantam roosters, parakeets, finches and budgerigars all pecked, roosted and fluttered in the big wire enclosure. Aunt Lizzie got the dropped feathers for her fly-tying. A bantam egg was my reward for being the youngest and, when boiled for my tea, had to be wrapped in a twist of newspaper to hold it in the egg cup.
My Mother could skin a rabbit, leaving only four puffs of hair around the legs and a bare, grinning skull. She skinned an eel by tying it head-down to a nail in the wash-house and, with her own weight, pull the skin off in one long tube. I remember one eel being wound into a circle in the frying pan, leaping with renewed life when the heat got to it. Chickens were cleaned and plucked, the feathers washed in a cheesecloth bag, aired until dry and sewn into pillows. We brought to Canada a feather tick of Mother’s making, which was used for years. Everything about a chicken was used except the squawk. Feet made a good strong broth and the wings made a good stiff duster for window corners. Sugar bags made fine dust cloths when rubbed with lard and scrubbed with strong soap to get out the printing. They were hemmed before using.
On hearing we were to go to ‘America’, we were the envy of all. My Mother walked to Jedburgh to get the boat tickets: she had borrowed a huge sum of money from a friend from her Edinburgh days – a woman who had married a well-to-do hotelier of Swiss origin. Aunt Phia, as we called her, was most generous with their funds but, sadly, lost a great sum in the stock crash of 1929. It took the Affleck family many years to pay back the debt. Dad was very reluctant to leave all things familiar, but the business was bankrupt and Mother wanted some better future for Nan and me. Madge and Jim were already in America – Jim in the United States and Madge in Toronto, Canada, setting up a home to receive us. Vaccinations and papers and packing took up some weeks and then came The Day. A taxi came from Kelso to take us to the Roxburgh train station. I couldn’t imagine why my Dad was embracing my weeping Grannie, Mother was wiping her nose and looking cheerful, Uncle Danny was wheezing with asthma and emotion – he was the younger brother and died the following August. Nan was stony-faced and silent, aged fifteen and leaving her friends and relations and her village. All I felt was a sense of adventure ahead of us, the ride in the taxi, the train and the big ship that was taking us to the New World. We never saw any of our folk again, until Peggy Campbell came to live with Nan after the war, and Cathy Bald came for some weeks to be with her Canadian husband who was in the army in Ontario. Dolly Purves and Miss Davidson came as well, but no members of the family.
One shining memory remains. One afternoon, I was in Freddie Dodds’ house at tea-time, and from the pantry came a bowl of tinned peaches, golden globes of a brilliant orange colour, floating in heavy syrup. We had never had them in our house. We were each given two in a saucer and thick cream poured over them. Surely heaven must be like this. Often, I think of the Joiner’s house and John Hewit’s smithy where interesting folk gathered around the forge and a wee girl was allowed to watch and listen to the Wise Men of the High Toun on the Hill.
Helen Capel