A Rowan Tree In My Garden Day 49

Idid do something about it. I started putting rouge on my cheeks again and wore lipstick when I was off duty.

I went to the hairdresser and got my hair cut and given a soft perm to keep it in a short, page boy style – in vogue at the time.

I bought myself a new coat. I think it must have been with mother’s help financially, although I was determined to live on my own earnings as much as I possibly could.

Shortly after buying the coat I needed a new dress in order to go to a ball to be held in the Caird Hall. This had come about through a lady I had met in Draffens tearoom – Stella Laing.

On day duty again, I had gone back to my old haunts whenever I had a morning off, which entailed visits to the library to re-explore poetry, Frank Russell’s bookstore and Draffens for coffee.

I was welcomed with open arms by Mrs Laing and her circle of friends. I was their adopted nurse. Where had I been?

I was wearing my new coat; one fitted at the waist with the new long length falling in a gentle flare.

It was deep blue in colour and I had been told several times that it brought out the blue in my eyes.

Accessory

As an accessory, on cold days, I draped a blue and red checked scarf round my neck; the blue in the scarf was an exact match to the colour of the coat. Mrs Laing very much admired the ensemble. “What a wonderful combination of colours. You do look pretty today and I love your new hairstyle,” she said.

Mrs Laing was one of these people who always found something nice to say about others, even supposing she might struggle to find something that was praiseworthy.

This always had the effect, for me and others, of making us feel better about ourselves. She kept up this happy trait all of her 93 years.

The first morning after night duty that I was back in Draffens she was there and, as usual, the centre of her band of women.

There was excitement in the air. The talk was all of the forthcoming Arts Ball to be held in the Caird Hall.

“Now you will come, my dear. Here are two tickets. I don’t want anything for them and bring your partner. I am sure a pretty girl like you has a young man not far off.”

I didn’t like to tell her that, on the contrary, I had no one but accepted the tickets.

My sister Jean came to the rescue. She was now at Dundee University in the first year of a master of arts degree.

Jean was pretty and outgoing and always seemed to have plenty of boyfriends. She offered me one of her many gentlemen friends.

“John asks me to go out with him sometimes,” she said. “He was dumped by a girlfriend and took it very hard, I believe.

“He’s a really nice lad and I feel sorry for him but, to be quite honest, I find him a bit boring. I think he might rather like to go to the Arts Ball.”

John and I met and he seemed to be happy to be my partner.

The ball was a grand affair. Fancy dress was the suggestion for the occasion, although this was optional.

Following my “golden” patient’s advice to make the most of myself, my new-look pale blue dress had a daringly low neckline and a mid-calf flared skirt. Wearing it made me feel good.

Glamorous

It was a truly glamorous, out-of-this-world night. Mrs Laing stood out in the throng.

She went to the event dressed as Mary Queen of Scots and made a most glamorous and statuesque reincarnation of her.

John was a pleasant partner, if somewhat unexciting and lacking in conversation.

I enjoyed the night, even if I knew few of the people there apart from my friend Inga, Mrs Jackson’s au pair, who I saw little of these days.

She was as beautiful as ever and head over heels in love with her Jewish partner. The love between them was palpable.

Towards the end of the evening Inga was sliding down the banisters of the Caird Hall, her boyfriend catching her at the bottom and saying: “Oh Inga, you are too wild.”

She was to break her heart, for a while, over this Jewish boyfriend who went home when he finished university and married a good Jewish girl, as his parents wished him to.

Inga wrote to me about 10 years later to tell me she was happily married to an American and sent me a photo of her beautiful baby boy.

Stella Laing, by these strange coincidences that happen in real life, became, at a later date, a neighbour of mine.

The Laing family bought a small farm in the Carse of Gowrie, North Inchmichael, which was run more as a hobby since Mr Laing was in fact a successful businessman.

His father had owned a much respected grocery shop in Broughty Ferry which, through time, the son had turned into a huge concern called Martex, which supplied Spar shops throughout the country.

The Laings became wealthy but never moved from the old farm house they purchased in the 1950s.

Stella had many extraordinary tales to tell of her youth. Her father was an engineer, her mother one of London’s Gaiety Girls from the Gaiety Theatre.

Distraught

When their children were small, they lived in Rhodesia and later South Africa: Stella, when four years old had, one day, wandered off from a picnic unnoticed by her parents.

After a frantic search, her father found her beside a lion in its den stroking its mane. He calmed the distraught mother by telling her their daughter had not been in any real danger as the lion had just eaten.

As a young woman Stella, as her contemporaries called her, (I always called her Mrs Laing) had come to Dundee and worked as an artist on a DC Thomson magazine for children called Fairyland Tales.

She was talented as both painter and sculptor. Art critics said of her, at a later date, that there was a charming naivety about her work. This I found to be true in her personality also. She said to me several times: “You know my dear, I just hate snobbery but I’m South African and there is just no snobbery there.”

The Laings had two children, a boy and a girl. Not long after coming to live at North Inchmichael they had a great tragedy.

Their only son,who was just 21 years old, died in a car crash. This did not alter Stella Laing’s attitude to people.

There was excitement in the air that morning. The talk was all of the forthcoming Arts Ball to be held in the Caird Hall

By Margaret Gillies Brown