Politicians of real vision are required

A while ago, we printed reminiscences of living in Townhill, near Dunfermline, in the 1920s and ’30s, written by Robert Wilson, one of the Townhill haulage family firm. Here, we print some more memories: “There was little entertainment at that time with the exception of the Band of Hope or the Magic Lantern in the store hall, Jock Mcdonald doing his best to keep order and the youngsters doing our utmost to skip in using the penny entry fee to buy a poke of chips and lathering with sauce and vinegar.

“The fastest way to get around in those days was by gird or, if you could pick up an old bike at the coup, you could get around on this, provided you could pedal it through the bar and handle it without tyres on the wheels. It was dangerous, however, if the wheels skidded on the tram lines.

“If you did skin your knees, it was a good excuse to go to the clinic in Inglis Street and instead of getting a tramcar up to Townhill, you would go round to Liptons and get a penny bag of broken biscuits with another three or four boys demanding to share them.

“All mothers were in a good mood as the Co-op dividend day drew near. Times were hard and borrowing quite common – a cup of sugar, half-loaf, a couple of eggs, a penny for the gas. Clothes ropes and stretchers were well guarded or they might disappear overnight.

“Fences were mainly built with apple barrel struts or anything you could get your hands on. Hen huts and kennels were built with wood from egg boxes which could be purchased cheaply from the egg shop.

“They had to be hauled up the braes on a two-wheeled barrow or a sack barrow borrowed quietly from Jimmie Lumsden’s lorry. The egg boxes often contained half a dozen eggs amongst the straw. If you got these, and threepence for going, you felt like a millionaire.”

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‘Greenie poles’

“Looking at the photograph in Saturday’s Craigie,” says a Monikie reader, “there’s something that I had completely forgotten about – ‘greenie poles’ with a central bar to hang an extra low-level line on.

“I remember we would do exactly what the lad in the photograph is doing, climbing on to that central bar.

“Were these only fitted with prefabs?”

Holding a candle

“The trouble with class reunions is that old flames have become even older,” wrote American columnist Doug Larson.

Daisy is speechless for a moment or two. The thought of her dad, of Rob, doing something similar, is so far beyond her imagination that it’s hard to understand why any father would contemplate doing it to a child, unless in desperate circumstances.

“Why?” she says again. “I mean, what’s in it for him?”

“What’s in it for him is that he thinks I’ll have to go back to Glasgow and take over running the shop. He sees this as my bolthole. My sanctuary. Which it is, of course. He thinks I make excuses to be here all the time, working on my fancy bits of furniture. Upcycling. You should have heard the way he spat that word out!”

Coercive control

Maybe he does make excuses to be here all the time. The thought had certainly crossed her mind, although she can’t say that to him now.

“Can he do it?” she asks instead.

“Of course he can do it.”

“But what about your mother?” “Well, yes. Her name is on the deeds right enough.”

“I thought the house was in her family originally.”

“It was. But she added his name when they got married. She once told me she wanted to share everything with him, and he was painting over here back then.” “So it’s in both their names?”

He looks exasperated, as though she’s being obtuse. “Yes, of course. She would have a say in it. As his wife. But you know, Mum tends to do as she’s told. And if he wants to sell, that’s what he’ll do.”

“Does she? Do as she’s told, I mean?” This is more or less what Mrs Cameron said too. But Fiona hadn’t struck her as being particularly meek.

“Oh, Daisy, you don’t know the half of it. Years of living with my dad.” He shakes his head. “What do they call it now? Coercive control? Gaslighting.”

“Surely not!”

“It’s hard to prove. Impossible really. It’s so well hidden and he’s so bloody charming in public. Or he can be, when it suits him.”

She remembers Mrs Cameron talking about a “vortex of negativity’. She had thought her overly dramatic, but perhaps not.

She hesitates, drinks some more of the whisky, almost whispers, “Is he violent?”

He shakes his head again but seems unperturbed by the question.

“No. That’s not the way he operates. It’s all words, all to do with control. He’s a very strong character and a very attractive character, Daisy, and when you pair that with the kind of success he’s had, everyone thinking how wonderful he is, telling mum how lucky she is... God, he’s the most selfish individual I’ve ever known.

“It took us years and years to understand it. How afraid she’d become of crossing him. As though the sky might fall if she challenged him. I don’t know what she was like before she met him, but people have told me everything was different.”

Attractive men

It strikes her again that she has met people like that in the past, people who seem able to exert an unreasonable pressure. Often deeply attractive men. It’s how they do it. One or two of her friends have been involved with men like this and she has seen how they work, finding fault, quarrelling with friends and family, gradually detaching their partner from their circle of support, and all for their own good. Allegedly.

“I think it was here that we first noticed it, though. Me and Catty, I mean. We used to get off the ferry and come here for the whole summer. The three of us.

“I always remember, the first thing we did, after we’d opened the door and put the bags inside, we’d go straight down to the beach. We’d be running about, making sure everything was as it should be: the rocks, the dunes.

“One year there’d been a terrible spring gale and a high tide and the sea had eaten into the sand hills. As though a giant had taken big bites out of it. And the salt had burned all the young leaves in the garden. We hated that. We liked everything to be the same.”

“I used to feel like that whenever I went to stay with my gran in Ayr. I hated it if she’d redecorated, or moved furniture around.”

“Anyway, Mum would be sitting on a rock and just breathing. We didn’t notice so much when we were little kids, but when we hit our teens we did. I remember Catty saying to me, ‘Isn’t she different? Isn’t Mum different on Garve?’ And she was.

“All the tension just drained out of her. It was as though she could be herself here. Until there was the occasional short visit from Dad, and then she’d change again. He was forever telling her she was doing things wrong: her driving, the garden, the cooking, the way things were here in the house, the fact that we’d go down to the beach in our pyjamas if we wanted to.

“The only saving grace was that he never stayed. He’d go and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the way we were.”

“Is that why she doesn’t come here much now? He doesn’t want her to?”

“That’s about it. When we were kids, he wanted the peace and quiet, so he was quite happy for her to bring us here. Now he needs her in the shop and for making sure the house runs the way he likes it. So she doesn’t come. She always says she can’t get away. But she could. Annabel could manage the shop perfectly well. Even Catty comes here sometimes, with the kids.” “So he wants you to run the shop?” “He wants me there. I think even he realises it’s getting a bit too much for my mum. They’re not getting any younger, and he doesn’t want to do it full-time, or even part-time, but he doesn’t want to let it go either. He could, you know. He could sell up. Just paint.”

“But wouldn’t you miss the income from it? I mean you, yourself.”

“I’d manage. You trade online, don’t you? I have a big fat book of contacts now. I could do some buying and selling, but concentrate on the restoration side of it. It’s Dad who likes having a shop window for his pictures. But I think, most of all, he likes us to be there, under his thumb.

“He’s like Hector, only without the good nature. He gets uneasy when he doesn’t know where we all are and what we’re doing.”

Now he needs her in the shop and for making sure the house runs the way he likes it. So she doesn’t come

The Posy Ring, first in the series The Annals of Flowerfield, is written by Catherine Czerkawska and published by Saraband. It is priced at £8.99.

“It was so lovely to see the bees visiting the crocus flowers in my garden,” says Jane Robertson of Freuchie. “I think spring is certainly here.”

John Dorward of Arbroath has sent in this photograph of Morgan Academy, Dundee, before it was damaged by fire.