“Had it not been a present from Henry, it might have gone crashing through the window

Margaret Gillies Brown

Iwas pleased about Ronnie’s new girlfriend. Perhaps he will settle down, I thought. But the following year they were off again. Judith had decided to take a year out at a hospital in India. Ronnie went with her. Marriage to Henry made a huge difference to my life. It was hard at first to get into the new routine. Someone was doing something for me. Not that my family had not been considerate in the past, but it’s just that growing up is difficult. It needs help and backing from an older generation. It’s difficult also to change.

Here I was still putting sugar in their tea. Sometimes in moments of forgetfulness I would put sugar in strangers’ teas. I had just got so used to doing things for people. Now Henry was doing things for me, looking after me as well as getting on with his own welding business.

He was also helping the boys on the farm, lending a hand at busy times, or mending implements, a contribution that saved them a lot of money.

It wasn’t that he said much. He wasn’t a man of many words. It was more what he did; tended the garden, took responsibilities off my back whenever he saw the opportunity, encouraged me to continue with my writing, especially the book about our years in Canada.

Unconcerned

Sometimes, looking back, I had thought the Canada episode had had little impact on our lives but I was wrong.

For a start I would not have met Henry. He would not have been a welder with a business of his own. Our farming policy might have been different.

I might not have become quite so self-reliant and unconcerned as to what others thought. Grant would not be in Canada now. My children might not have developed this insatiable wanderlust.

I would not have this deep desire to write this book about our Canadian experience against all odds.

One day, not too long after we were married, Henry bought me one of the early Amstrad computers. He got advice from one of his brothers-in-law who knew about these things.

I had been struggling away with an old typewriter, typing and re-typing. I wasn’t good at it. It would take me forever. Now I had this computer, which did marvellous things.

However, to begin with it was very difficult. Not many people had them at the time. How would I ever learn? The manual that came with them seemed very complicated. There were a few classes but I thought they might have confused me even further.

The easiest way would have been to learn step by slow step with the aid of some kind person who knew what they were doing. Brother-in-law Tom helped me a lot and his daughter Carol. And then Brenda, my university friend, got one and we did a lot of working out together.

In the beginning, had it not been a present from Henry and because I was determined it would be of use, it might have gone crashing through the window in sheer exasperation.

However, once I learned the rudiments, it became the most valuable thing I possessed. I finished my manuscript and got it up on the screen.

Once there I could make any improvements I wished so easily, it was a joy. Initially I printed out two copies, one to keep for myself, one to send out. I got hold of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and sent it to whoever I thought the most likely taker.

Fresh air

Months would go by and six months later it would come back with little comment other than “although an interesting story we are not really interested in anything autobiographical unless you are famous”.

So all my doubting literary advisers had been right. However, I wasn’t going to be put off that easily but I did reckon that if I sent it out to a lot of publishers, it could take forever, especially if they all took six months to return the book. Some warned me about a year’s delay before it was sent back.

I decided to print out five chapters selected from the book and write a synopsis and send five or six out at a time. Sooner or later they all came bounding back mostly with the same story.

Fictionalise it, some said. One or two were kind enough to praise it. Hodder & Stoughton said it was like a breath of fresh air coming into their stuffy London office; they enjoyed it, but no. I think it was those one or two that had praised it, genuinely, that kept me going. After the manuscript came back 30 times I re-read it myself and decided it wasn’t well enough written.

I did two things. First, I asked a few literary friends whose opinion I respected if they would be so kind as to read it and give me an honest assessment. Second, I started to write a romance for a Mills & Boon-type market. I had to learn how to write a story and figured the only way to gain experience was to do it.

We had a good summer that year. I can remember how much I enjoyed sitting out writing in glorious sunshine in the quiet garden that Henry was getting into some sort of shape after years of neglect.

I was thoroughly enjoying writing a romance. Each Tuesday I went into the Dundee University group with the next instalment. They all seemed to enjoy it and couldn’t wait for the next, they said.

I sent it to Mills & Boon and they turned it down. To be quite honest, I think it was a bit tongue in cheek, which they don’t like and there was no explicit sex, which they were now beginning to go into.

I sent it to Robert Hale. “Send it back in six months,” they said, “we are snowed under just now but we will consider it later.” However, when I did send it back they said they were reorganising what they published and had discontinued this line.

Visitors

My world outside literature was still very busy. Different in some ways ,but still busy. Sometimes there were none of the younger members of the family at home.

Michael now had a cottage of his own on the farm. Lindsay was more or less living up in Aberdeen or away on world adventures like the rest. Kathleen, after a year at home once she left school, had also gone to Aberdeen to live.

The old farm house wasn’t bulging at the seams any more. Well, not all the time, but visitors would appear out of nowhere and there was always room for them.

Sometimes I would be going back upstairs in the mornings to make the beds and meet someone coming down I had never seen before.

“Sorry, Mum, forgot to tell you. She’s a pal I met in Australia.” or “Sorry, Mum, he’s from Baghdad. He was hitch hiking. It was absolutely coming down in buckets. We gave him a lift. Awfully late to go to a youth hostel so we brought him here.”

Sometimes, however, I was asked. “A friend I met in India. Could put him up for a week or so?”

“Tell me something about him.”

“Well, he’s Indian.”

“Uh huh.”

“And he’s a priest.”

“Oh.” “He helped Judith and me when we were in India. He was kind to us. After Judith finished her doctoring we wanted to do some work on the land. No one needs you to work on the land in India, they’ve got plenty workers but Dharma Raj took us in, fed us, kept us, got us small jobs to do. I owe him. He’s quite a man, Mum. You’ll like him.”

More tomorrow.